


My Dark Disquiet

by Rutkowski



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bechdel Test Pass, Canon LGBTQ Female Character, Canon Lesbian Character, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Complete, F/F, Flashbacks, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Post-Episode: s07e22 Chosen, Reunions, Spotify Soundtrack Playlist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:01:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 18
Words: 58,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28038852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rutkowski/pseuds/Rutkowski
Summary: Post-series Willow retire from the Scoobies and tries to live a normal life while grieving her big lost love.Slow and angsty. Ignores most things from the comics, everything in show is canon.Night, the world, it's mineWith nobody else out hereIt's time, run wildAnd royally cavalierTo burn, igniteI'd do it for so much lessWhen all is made clearThere is nothing elseMy Dark DisquietPoets of the Fall
Relationships: Tara Maclay/Willow Rosenberg
Comments: 13
Kudos: 19





	1. No End, No Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> NOTICE: I've done a full once-over of the fic after I first completed it to fix glaring issues with pacing and grammar that I missed the first time through. If you read the story before January 2nd then you read the old stuff that was like 7000 words shorter so you might enjoy giving it another try; I'm much happier with it now.
> 
> The keen-eyed observers among you(and those who read chapter summaries) might recognize that all but one of the chapter titles(and the story as a whole) are named from songs from the band Poets of the Fall.
> 
> As such I've made a spotify playlist to accompany the fic. It's all Poets of the Fall(except for the song Revachol Dawn by Berlin Child) and all of the good stuff. Listen and enjoy!
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2zblGLOQJDl28ZLdEUD549?si=deXWnyK9Q2GiHMBD_8FEtQ

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _We can't seem to let go  
>  The thread's so thin it just doesn't show anymore  
> It seems like we're playing charades  
> Playing like we're afraid to live_  
> No End, No Beginning  
> Poets of the Fall

The bell rang and the students quickly began the usual process of gathering their books and supplies - to prepare the weekly ritual that took place at the end of Friday's classes.

They packed their bags and put on their outerwear - if applicable - socialized with friends, avoided their bullies and then moved to start the journey back home. Some walked, others biked, were picked up by their parents or took the bus and a decent percentage of the older students drove either their own or borrowed vehicles.

Amongst the students hurrying around the corridors of Revachol High there was a small woman who silently dodged and weaved her ways through the crowds. She had made avoidance an artform by never saying a word outside of class or the obligatory parent-teacher meetings and kept to herself during all her spare time in the school. Her results were excellent, as they had been almost her entire life, but she constantly had faculty members commenting that she needed to form social connections to function properly in the school.

She never gave the comments any weight. She knew how it was back in the day before everything happened. Before everything fell apart. She was the third wheel in a small group of friends that was her entire social circle until tenth grade back in Sunnydale. After that the group grew even as old friends disappeared but was never stable, was never safe. She was still a weirdo and a loner in many ways and was always considered to be an eccentric for her love of learning. At home she was even more lonely. No siblings and parents who saw her except for a couple of days per month on average. She was raised by impersonal post-its and bundles of cash that paid for the food they didn't cook and the love they never gave.

She hated her solitary life back then but appreciated it now. It gave her a proper training and mental preparation for how her life was now going to be. She got her coat from her locker, retrieved her private laptop and put it in the designated bag. As she came outside she was greeted by the light summer rain. She opened her umbrella and headed for her old car. It was a classic, the old type of red Mini Coopers. She never had an eye or interest in cars but when she saw it on the used car lot she decided to splurge for once. It wasn't like she had anything else she wanted to spend the money on.

She drove home in the rain as the asphalt provided an almost magical reflection from the light rain forming pools that the sun illuminated with glee. She kept to the main road until her street opened up on the right side of the road. Her suburban house wasn't big but it was cheap and acquired quickly after a spot was found at Revachol High for her. It was initially out of budget but after selling all her assets bar clothing, the bare essentials, a memento or two and her computer she had a bit of leeway in regard to money issues.

That wasn't too long ago but to her it felt like a lifetime. Not that it was much of a way to measure time for her, she felt tired beyond her years and the last thing she said before she had left, back in the day, is that she felt like she had survived for several lifetimes and that it was time to actually live at least one.

She didn't do too well in that regard. She had been forced to admit to herself that she still hadn't learned how to live.

She parked the car in the driveway and hurried under the umbrella to the front door of the small two-room house. After dropping her keys only once - an improvement since yesterday when she fumbled her keys three times in similar weather conditions - she moved inside and deposited the umbrella in the kitchen sink.

After that, it was back to her critical routines. The green coat went up on the hanger, rainwater dripping down on the assigned towel she used to prevent damage to the wooden floors, and her black boots were lazily left on the inner doormat. The front door lead directly to the living room that was attached to the kitchen area in an open-floor plan that worked great for her. Had anyone else lived there, or even visited at all, it'd be very hard for them to have any privacy at all since the only other two doors led to the bathroom and bedroom respectively.

The woman was dressed in drab colors, a grey skirt and brown shirt that invited others to not pay her any attention. They fit her slender form well but her mousy posture ensured that she easily would be able to dodge any potential suitors.

She put the laptop on the table next to the recliner by the backyard window and headed to the kitchen to start the electric kettle. As it noisily started the appreciated - if unglamorous - work she took out a bag of tea and a pair of sugar cubes. She deposited them into a mug that she had placed on a small wooden tray. While the kettle continued it's loud craft she took out a can of spaghettios and a spoon that she put next to the mug.

Once the kettle was ready she filled the mug and then moved to the recliner, tray in hand, and sat down for her usual friday afternoon dinner. The same dinner she ate all other days of the week.

After finishing the dinner and tea she pulled up a blanket from the side of the chair and opened her laptop to get to work on what remained of the semester's work from the school. It was dark when she finished and she put the laptop back in the charger, replacing the place of honor in her lap with an old and torn poetry collection. She had read the book dozens of times but found it a safe haven to remind her of better times. She read in silence - the fireflies who had started their summer visitations in her backyard being the only company she needed - and allowed herself a hesitant smile in remembrance of the past.

It didn't linger long.

She put away the book and continued to observe the fireflies in silence. She never had any music on these days as the lyrics and instruments providing only unwelcome distractions to her self-imposed isolation. She also never spoke unless directly confronted outside of the walls of Revachol High. Her prepaid cell phone had never once been required to charge beyond the initial amount as her only calls was those made to utility companies and other essential contacts. Even her emails outside of school were extremely sparse with only a quarterly reminder to one of her old friends to ensure them that she is alive and well.

If they ever responded she didn't know about it. She had set up a filter to delete all responses years ago and she never gave any updates on her own life past her survival. They didn't know where she was, what she was doing or even if she had the same name as before.

In the beginning she wasn't sure it was fair to them. She only sent the emails to ensure they won't try to track her down - she was very clear that she would have no part of her old life but knew that if they found her she'd never be allowed to stay at peace for long. There was always another crisis, always another emergency, and she'd be forced to go back to the war and life she had finally managed to leave behind.

She knew she was a coward and she was perfectly fine with that assessment of herself.

She quickly abandoned the idea of unfairness since she never read the responses(if there were any) and she hadn't even once tried to see what they were doing once she left the group. A long time had passed since she last trusted her own self-discipline to stay away from trouble.

She whispered a silent incantation and the lights in the house turned off and she eased into a comfortable position, the long red hair was moved to the side so she could fall asleep watching the dancing fireflies in the backyard. They moved in seemingly random patterns, circling around each other and acting like drunk teenagers at their first beach party. Only one of all the fireflies - the one shining a little bit brighter than the rest - seemed to have a purpose. It was noticeable from a distance and went straight for the window with no deviation in its path and not even bouncing against the window stopped it. Not the first time it tried, not the fifth time. After being barred by the window for roughly a dozen times it slowly faltered and disappeared into nothing.

Willow's consciousness followed soon thereafter.

* * *

  
_Three years ago_

Faith couldn't contain her excitement as she moved towards Buffy. "Looks like the Hellmouth is officially closed for business."

Behind her Giles and Dawn followed and a couple of yards after that Willow and Xander slowly moved up to join them. Buffy remained in place as she was facing the crater that was all that remained of the city she had given her life to save. Twice. The city that held her home for the last seven years. She let her friends come up behind her and Willow almost felt the smile that was forming on her best friend's face.

It hurt. Willow wished she could offer a genuine smile herself but she couldn't. With the destruction of Sunnydale there was nothing left of the life she had lived until then. There was nothing left of Tara. Nothing left of her 'Forever'.

All she had to remember Tara by was the Doll's Eye Crystal and a worn photo that she kept in her jacket's inner pocket. Everything Tara Maclay had ever been was reduced to a crystal and a picture with no name. No longer a grave. She had no belongings of her remaining and one thing Willow had learned this last year there would be no-one else remembering the woman that once was such a huge part of their lives.

She had thought they'd at least keep some pictures up for her when she returned from England the past summer. Instead they had scrubbed the Summers house clean of anything that proved Tara had ever lived there, that she had ever been part of their family. She knew it was to prevent triggering another Willow breakdown when she came back from her 'magic rehab' but that only made it worse. It proved both that they would never trust her again and that they only saw Tara as an attachment to Willow's personality even after her death.

"There's another one in Cleveland." Giles pointed out, as if bound by law to be the wet blanket his job often required him to be. "Not to spoil the moment."

Of course. Why should they ever get even a day's worth of rest. Or even an hour. They were conscripted child soldiers since the age of fifteen and she'd never be allowed to become a civilian again. She was by now the most powerful Wicca in the world by a fair margin; there's no way Buffy would let her 'Big Gun' stay on the bench.

Xander seemed to still be in shock and Willow understood him. She thought she understood how he felt better than anyone else. He had just lost Anya and he couldn't do anything to prevent it. "We saved the world." Willow let go of him. She kept the empty smile plastered over her face but questioned if they really had saved the world. There were more Hellmouths in the world.

Where there's Hellmouths, there's demons.

Where there's demons, there's cults.

Where there's cults, there's prophecies.

Where there's prophecies, there's the apocalypse.

Where's the apocalypse, Willow will be sent to support Buffy in stopping it. And it's sent. Dispatched. When the Coven had kept her alive last summer - instead of binding her powers or killing her - they had sealed her fate as a fighter for the rest of her miserable life, indentured in a debt in blood she'd never be able to repay. She'll be ordered to fight, not asked.

It hurt her to be treated like a dangerous weapon. It hurt that they all thought that she had murdered some local townie the first thing when she returned. It hurt that her friends didn't really see her as anything but a volatile burden most of the time.

It hurt to know that every day that they didn't trust her to not go insane as soon as something reminded her of Tara. She remember their first dinner together once she returned from England and Anya had accidently mentioned Tara by name. Willow didn't remember the subject but she remember how they all froze mid-motion and stared at her. They waited to see if she'd explode, to see if those four letters were a dark incantation that would detonate the Willowy suicide bomb.

She had just continued eating, pretending like she hadn't noticed their reactions, but the scene was a common feature in the scenes of her head during the frequently recurring bouts of uncontrollable crying when she couldn't sleep at night.

A rug over a stained carpet and a set of photos moved to the attic. Tara's dresser was put in the basement and her clothes stored next to the photos in the attic. They couldn't handle remembering the failures - both Willow's and their own - had lead to a misogynic monster killing the love of her life. Her reason for not completely detaching from reality to silently waste away into nothingness.

Willow slowly walked forward Buffy. "We changed the world." But was it for the better, she silently asked herself. How many girls had she been tasked to sentence to a short lifetime of nightmares both prophetic and inherited? How many actually had the choice that Buffy had offered them earlier that day? How many would've said no if given the chance? She knew that Buffy had wanted to get rid of the Slayer in her many times in her early years. Buffy had hated what was forced upon her and now she had ordered Willow to get do the same - to get it done - to hundreds, perhaps thousands of other girls around the world. "I can feel them, Buffy. All over. Slayers are awakening everywhere." She sighed, both happy and sad that she hadn't been consumed by the magic as she activated the Slayers.

Mostly happy though. Especially happy that Kennedy wouldn't be forced to kill her. She knew the pain that having your dead girlfriend's blood on your hands curtailed. She had been a monster to demand Kennedy to do that to her if everything went bad.

Dawn returned Willow's mind to the situation at hand. "We have to find them." 

Willow panicked inwardly. 'Oh God no. I can't be part of another army made out of child soldiers. I have to get out now or I'll be damning myself even worse.'

"We will." She couldn't tell them. She needed to get out but if they knew about it in advance she'd be forced to stay; either by physical force or guilt.

"Yes, because the mall was actually in Sunnydale so there's no hope of going there tomorrow." 'Giles had become better at the inane banter the group used to cover the emotional scarring that had damaged them all beyond normality,' Willow admitted to herself as she frantically tried to come up with an excuse that could give her an opportunity to disappear for good.

Dawn acted up an obviously mocking rendition of being upset. "We destroyed the mall? I fought on the wrong side."

Willow seethed inwardly. 'We lost good people today. Well mostly good people. Anya and Spike were our friends in a way and several young girls had died and they were joking about the fucking mall? And they had the gall to demand of me to regret what I had said and done after Tara's murder when they were just as callous as I had been back then?'

She did regret attacking her friends, that was a given. But ending the existence of a parasitic warlock that exploited young women and teenage girls? Flaying the murderer of Tara and attempted rapist and murder of his ex? No, she didn't regret that. She was glad she killed Warren and if she got the opportunity to change the outcome after she caught up to him she wouldn't ease his suffering at all. If anything she'd do the opposite.

She only regretted that she hadn't killed Warren before that dark day. And that Xander hadn't stopped him once he saw the gun. Or that Buffy hadn't stopped him so many times before when she got the chance; especially after she had realized that Warren had murdered his ex Katrina and tried to frame Buffy. Or when he and his friends had poisoned Buffy and almost led her to murder her family and friends.

No, she did not regret killing Warren. She had a lot of other things that she wished she could change but not ending his threat, once and for all.

Xander kept the facade going. "All those shops gone. The Gap, Starbucks, Toys-R-Us… Who will remember all those landmarks unless we tell the world about it?"

Giles returned to the role of token straight-man. "We have a lot of work ahead of us."

"Can I push him in?" Faith asked in jest but their history made the joke hit a bit too close to home. Willow felt a pang of guilt as she - just for an instant - considered it as a valid option.

Willow turned towards Faith; knowing that she had to take part of the conversation to avoid any suspicion of her plans. "You've got my vote." She knew that just like with Faith's comment the banter would send shivers up the spines of those around her that saw what she did a year ago. When she stopped living and started surviving.

"I just wanna sleep, yo, for like a week." Faith was tired, that was obvious. She looked fatigued in a way that Willow hadn't seen before, not even after waking up from her almost year-long coma.

"I guess we all could if we wanted to." Dawn added with a smile that heralded the collapse into fatigue that would inevitably happen as soon as the bus started rolling again.

Willow felt she needed to probe the group for their next move, to keep them set towards a common goal. "Yeah. The first is gone, so... Whaddya think we should do, Buffy?"

Faith grinned. "Yeah, you're not the one and only Chosen anymore, you just gotta live like a person, how's that feel?" Faith had won, in the end. Willow suddenly realized that ironic fact. Faith had won since Buffy now had to accept that she wasn't the Chosen One, or even Chosen Two. She was just one of many Chosen. Far from a nobody but no longer the only one.

Dawn turned back to her sister and continued. "Yeah Buffy. What are we gonna do now?"

Buffy's smile grew wide and she turned to the group to offer words of comfort, of gratitude for their collective efforts and sacrifices despite all they had faced together. But just as she opened her mouth to answer her baby sister she instead just blinked out of existence altogether.

The following chaos put the mustering to war that morning to shame. Dawn ran around in a panic and shouted for her sister while Giles stood frozen in fear. Faith moved towards the bus to see if Buffy had somehow appeared in that area. Xander turned to Willow with an accusing stare.

"Will, did you do this? Did you do the whole 'invisible-to-everyone-but-me' thing again?"

Willow's face fell and she was reminded again that she would always be suspect number one no matter what. When the supernatural threw them a curveball - when it appeared in a way that they didn't immediately recognize - they would always blame her before applying even a semblance of critical thinking. Willow knew she had to get out right then or it would never happen. They'd break the last remaining shreds of her willpower and she'd become a kept witch, a household asset. Their Big Gun.

"Xander, I can't do this again. We didn't even get ten minutes of rest before another crisis appeared. I can't live like this. It feels like I've only just barely survived for what feel like several lifetimes and it is time for me to actually be able to live at least one, to be anything else but a dangerous weapon. I hope you find Buffy safe and sound but this is our final goodbye. Apologize to the rest of them and tell Kennedy that it's over between us, she can't wait for me because I won't return to her. I love you and I'm sorry about Anya." She embraced him quickly and then pulled back. "Bye."

She was gone before he got the chance to respond. It was the last time Xander Harris would ever see his best friend.


	2. Children of the Sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _When you're done with all the strife  
>  When they echo the minds in the streets  
> You know your heart beats  
> A solitary call  
> For a change in the tone of it all  
> You'll be scaling that wall  
> And the higher you climb  
> The more you can see of this life  
> On the edge of that knife  
> You hold on to me  
> Hold on to me_  
> Children of the Sun  
> Poets of the Fall

"Okay everyone, class dismissed. Have a nice summer and I'll see you in the fall. Except for those of you with remedial classes in three weeks, obviously. We'll see each other in, well, three weeks."

The majority of students collected their textbooks and associated equipment for the last time that semester. The grades were set, final classes were finished and few of them had any reason to stay in school for even a minute longer than was demanded by school policy.

One of the few exceptions was a lanky guy with short black hair who just finished his junior year at Revachol High. He remained in the class but had, just like his classmates, packed up his supplies when the bell rang. Instead of moving towards the exit he started moving the tables closest to the teacher's desk, forming a small half-circle of three tables that all faced towards it.

Willow let him do the reorder in silence, remaining her introverted self whenever she wasn't required to speak. The teen had gotten to know her over the last year and knew it was not an act of ill will or frustration, just a character trait of his enigmatic tutor. She was more open to him and the other students who were about to join them than she were with anyone else and appreciated the implicit trust that she had given them.

Once the student - known Rick to his friends - was all but finished he was joined by three other students who arrived after finishing up their respective final classes of the school year. They were all girls but of different ages. The tall and stout girl with brown hair that was bound together in a single long braid headed the new arrivals with a bashful grin. Bella had - together with Rick - been the founding member of the Gay-Straight Alliance back in October and acted as the 'shield' and protection for her fellow members.

As the oldest daughter of a former pro wrestler Bella was known to be strong and sturdy and - after getting a week's suspension for beating up a linebacker who had shouted slurs at Rick soon after the formation of the student club - her presence in the club ensured that any attempt to harass her fellow GSA members dared retribution from someone who valued her friendships more than a perfect school record. The unspoken - but always present - question that lingered in the back of their mind was what would happen the next year since she had just graduated and would no longer attend Revachol High. The school wasn't overly ripe with abuse and harassment but their suburb wasn't big and tolerance of minority sexual orientations and gender identities was tenuous at the best of times.

Taking a seat between her and their faculty sponsor was Sandra Jones. She was a sophomore and the youngest of the group. Small, thin and with her blonde hair usually set in a high ponytail she often reminded Willow of her best friend in High School. She did not possess any supernatural strength or speed and as far as she knew there were no prophecies of Chosen Ones in her future. She had joined the small club after the new year break when a fellow student and former close friend had spitefully outed her as a lesbian during a bitter fight at a party. Her social circle had evaporated almost immediately but she found a sense of kinship in the club that gave her an anchor in social connections at the school.

At the other end of Willow's desk was Sapphire, the other senior of the group. She had been elated when she found out about the formation of the club after having spent many afternoons patching up cuts and bruises from fellow students who refused to accept her chosen name, instead using the deadname Simon as a slur every chance they got. Up until a couple of months ago Sapphire's parents had been in a battle with the school administration for them to recognize her name and identified gender but had been stonewalled until Willow went against the administration and openly pushed for her acceptance.

Rick Andies - proudly out as gay since he was thirteen and spouting several pins promoting inclusivity, acceptance, rainbows and equality - finished reorganizing the tables and took his seat in-between Sapphire and Bella. He pulled out his notebook to serve as the record keeper of the Gay-Straight Alliance club for the last time of his junior year, the meeting serving as the conclusive gathering for their inaugural year. As soon as everyone were seated they were joined by Willow who put down her paperwork and took out a fist-sized green crystal from her bag and placed it on her desk.

The group knew the quiet teacher was a follower of the Wicca faith. They also knew that nobody else in school - including the administration - were to know about it without her expressed approval. She had offered it up as a piece of private information to give them the confidence to be open and honest with each other and themselves while the club was in session.

In a nutshell it was giving trust to encourage trust.

And it was potentially dangerous information for Willow.

Willow was the only teacher who was willing to act as the resident faculty advisor that the school board required for any student-led clubs to be permitted to organize on school grounds. By going against the grain of her colleagues she ensured a career under the microscope and if it weren't for her excellent educational records she probably would have been let go after the first year once they realized she wasn't just an ally but an open lesbian as well. If some of the more conservative members of the board, or even the more loudmouthed parents, found out that she were of a fringe religious group that had been heavily stigmatized just a decade before then she'd risk her job at Revachol High and would either have to find a new career or move out of town since it was the only high school in the suburb.

They used the Doll's Eye Crystal - affectionately nicknamed 'Dolly' by Sapphire(and soon thereafter the other members as well) - as a 'speaking stick' to ensure that everyone got the chance to talk. It was Bella, the loudest and most vocal of the group, who had suggested the method since she knew of her own tendency to unwittingly take over conversations, a trait she had inherited from her very extroverted father. Willow threw the crystal to Bella who was the elected chairwoman of the club and it landed perfectly - something ordinally out of character for the otherwise quite spazzy woman - in the senior's hand, allowing her to catch it one-handed.

These four members of the GSA were really the only students that actually knew Willow as something else than a quiet but skilled teacher. They knew she was clumsier than most but somehow she had never thrown Dolly in a way that it risked falling to the ground, no matter the recipient's talent or skill in catching it. It was something they had asked her often - becoming a running joke of sorts - but she always blamed it on luck or good karma.

She had never told them that she was a practicing witch and that she used magic to ensure the crystal would never be even slightly scuffed. It was a lifeline for her by providing a magical masking spell that ensured that no spells practiced by any living mystic would ever be able to find or identify her. She had also found out that it provided a calming effect for anyone who held it with good intentions - bolstering confidence and one's self-image - which made is a natural choice once Bella proposed the 'speaking stick' method to the club.

She also knew for a fact that Tara would have loved to see it used in such a manner, especially with these kids. The crystal had only been imbued with the masking charm that would not provide the kind of spiritual boost that was present. Willow had used detection magic to identify any lingering effects that Tara might have put into the stone in the past but came up short every time. Other than the masking charm it was a completely mundane crystal.

Except for Tara's influence. Willow didn't know why or how but she knew that it was the spirit and good will of Tara that lingered in the stone; providing spiritual aid to those of good souls that needed it. It did nothing for Willow herself.

It was how she knew that those of corrupted souls had nothing to gain from it. She did not fail to see the irony in the situation.

The situation reminded her of her first - and only - boyfriend who went to the other side of the world and back to get control of the wolf that he blamed for sleeping with another woman. Only when he got back with the cure in hand that he realized that Willow was the only exception to the cure.

Not that it would've changed anything with her feelings for Oz. She had come to terms with her previously repressed homosexuality by then. Even if she hadn't she had enough pride to not let someone who disappeared for months and who just expected her to sit around and wait for him to return without even knowing he was alive. He had been in contact with his friends but refused to even speak with her by letter or phone and she had realized that she'd rather be alone by choice than lonely while in a cold relationship with someone who she felt never prioritized her.

"Okay sisters. I hereby open the final meeting of the Revachol Gay-Straight Alliance Club's inaugural year."

Bella grinned at Rick who returned the friendly jest with a smile. The members of the group, Bella in particular, were the only ones at school who he didn't mind using feminine pronouns when referring to or speaking to him. It was kind of ironic since it was the same kind of language that had gotten Bella into the fight that led to her suspension in the first place.

"All current members and faculty advisor miss Mactrista are present. I have received only two scheduled requests to give the word to members, Sapphire and Sandra. I also have one thing I'd like to announce myself but I'm saving that for last, we don't have to rush that shit. Sandy, you up?"

Sandra smiled and held out her hand for Bella to hand over the crystal.

"You didn't make it very far this time with the official-ish speak, are you slipping at your old age?" Bella blowing raspberries was the not-so-dignified response she gave back.

"Anyways, it is actually a question for the next school year. I know we've all thought about it but never spoken about it. We all know that the only reason we've been able to stay safe is because of Bella and miss Mactrista providing physical and institutional protection and," she anxiously turned to Willow, "with no offense intended miss Mactrista but a teacher can never have full insight into the doings of the other students. Bella has protected us in a way that you can't, not without risking both legal and worky consequences."

Willow offered a knowing smile. She knew exactly what Sandra meant, she had been both the protector and protect-ee when it came to other students back when she was the social outcast. Sure her demons were often of the more literal kind once Buffy entered her life but she had far too much experience with tormentors of the more mundane inclination. Sandra accepted the reassurance she gave through the smile and continued.

"My point is what we do next year? Bella is graduating now but some of the worst assholes - sorry about the frenchiness - are Juniors and will leap on any perceived weakness next year. I'm, well," she finished with a whisper as she retreated into herself and shrank into her seat, "afraid."

Rick nodded in recognition, as did Sapphire. She was graduating as well but had more experience than her peers when it come to the depth of the hatred that their schoolmates could display for that which they did not understand. Sandra handed the crystal back to Bella who put her other hand on Sandra's shoulder for reassurance.

"I get it squirt, I really do. I even considered flunking out on purpose just to be able to keep you girls safe," she chuckled. "But I knew that if I even tried miss Mac would flay me alive for avoiding my scholarly responsibilities!"

The students laughed at the notion of any kind of violence from their timid teacher. What they didn't see was the growing feeling of nausea within their sponsor, nausea spurred on by vivid memories of Warren's skinless body shaking seconds after being violently skinned by her will alone. She took a few seconds to gather herself again, safe with the comfort that the students never expected any kind of jab in return even as they were comforted enough to jest at her.

She smiled to reassure them that she appreciated the friendly barb, suddenly realizing that she's become the Giles of the club. Not only as the adult in the room but also as the willing butt of their jokes. There were a couple of times she did respond in kind which both shocked and amused her wards, something she always appreciated when Giles did to her and her friends as well. He was shaken out of her reverie when Bella continued.

"But I got good news for both you and Rick. You see my sis is a freshman next year and girls, she makes me look a meek wittle kitten. And don't you worry miss Mac. She isn't violent but she is almost as big as me and a total ally to the family. She have promised to join the club first chance she get and actually become the first S for the GSA!"

Sandra calmed considerably while Rick showed no outward reaction to the news - confirming Willow's suspicions that Bella had already given him the heads up. While all four kids were friends Bella and Rick had become close as siblings during her suspension and were known to be almost inseparable. While Willow would usually be a bit sad that Bella wouldn't go to college she was happy that the young woman would remain close to her friends as she joined her uncle's shipping company by the docks.

And if her own history had taught her anything it was that college was by no means any signs of success. Everyone used to think that Willow would become some tech wiz millionaire and that her best friend Xander would bounce between entry-level jobs with no future or success. It only took three years until Willow almost killed herself in her addictive spiral and ended up living as a leech at Buffy's home while Xander were on his way to getting married after securing a good career as a carpenter.

Willow had salvaged some of what she had destroyed and changed her college courses to become a teacher - to help other kids be better people than she were(and according to her, still was) but abandoning everyone you had ever known and living alone without friends or family was not exactly the milestones to success that she once had expected.

Bella handed 'Dolly' over to Sapphire who silently accepted it with a nod. Willow had heard from Bella that Sapphire used to be loud and outgoing before she came out as transgender but the violent and cruel reaction to the news had quieted the girl. Her quiet and mousy demeanor reminding Willow of both herself at that age and of Tara when they first met. Willow had promised herself early on that she would do everything she could to ensure that Sapphire would have some kind of safety while under her protection. It was a promise made much easier to uphold when she found out that Sapphire's parents gave their daughter full support both morally and with practical matters. She knew that it was unfortunately a rarity for most other trans teens.

"I just want to say, uh, big thanks to miss Mactrista. The school board had refused to use my name on my diploma and forced me to accept one with the deadname. But- but then; look what the vice principal reluctantly gave me this morning before first period!"

She pulled out two diplomas. One was crumbled and dirty and Willow surmised that it was probably caused by Sapphire herself once she noticed the wrong name on the document. The other was pristine clean and she excitedly pointed towards her actual name with a face-splitting grin.

"Thanks so very much miss Mactrista! My parents were over the roof when I snuck away to call them at lunch and told me to say thanks from them as well. They also reminded me to offer our full support if you or the club ever need help with anything we can provide in the future, no questions asked!"

Willow offered a smile of a size she rarely managed anymore. She hadn't heard her battles with the board had actually gotten the intended results and it was a perfect milestone for both her and the club in general, documented proof of their group helping people live a better life.

"W-wow, that's awesome Sapph! I'm so very happy for you, you know? Say thanks to the elder Carmichaels for their support, I'm always happy to have the support of parents who doesn't shy away from fighting for their kids' rights."

A sarcastic cough led Sapphire to hand Dolly over the chairwoman who moved it along to their tutor. "Now now, miss Mac. I think your infamously overt displays of emotions and joyful exuberance have made you forget the very important protocols we've put in our founding documents here."

She motioned to Rick who pulled out the infamous 'GSA Constitution' they had adopted at their first official meeting. It was written in shaky letters on an unruled paper with a pink marker and was a mockery to everything approaching respectability. It simply had four simple rules.

_1\. GSA is the shit and all queers rule_  
_2\. Terfs can jump off a bridge_  
_3\. Don't speak without ~~the speaking stick~~ Dolly_  
_4\. If in doubt, see rule one or two._

Willow accepted the offered crystal with a smirk. "My apologies honored chairwoman. Still, I'm really happy for you all. I wish the best of luck for both you and Sapphire in the future and remember, you're never alone. Never. Now before we finish up for the summer and I start waiting to meet both the littlest Bella and our returning members I think you had an announcement yourself?"

She handed the crystal back to Bella who grinned. "Nah, it was about my sis but that's already done and dealt with. If nobody else had something to add I think we're done here. Love to all my sisters and good luck finding a better chairwoman than myself next year!"

Bella stood up and held out the crystal as if she were to drop it like a mic. She faked the releasing motion before Willow yelped in protest, the panic in her eyes displaying the lack of any humor in her motion.

"Shit. Sorry miss Mac, bad joke. I'd never do that, you know that right?"

Willow stood frozen mid-motion but yet again managed to reorganize her emotions and nodded slowly. "It's okay. Really, just weren't prepared. Now all of you go, I'll clean up here so the janitor won't get cross on us all. Don't want to return next year with all the computer lab equipment unplugged and overturned."

The students offered their farewells and well-wishes for the summer and quickly exited the classroom. Soon, silence overtook the empty halls of Revachol High and the quiet footsteps of Willow Mactrista were the only signs of life left in the building.

Despite her contentment of the victory in Sapphire's struggle for name recognition Willow sighed inwardly; knowing that she had resigned herself for yet another summer where the sum total of her spoken words would likely be confined to the back of a very small postcard.


	3. Love Will Come to You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Love is there when you open the door  
>  And you step off the trail you knew before  
> Through the streets and the houses of gods you roam  
> And on their altars you lay your heart of stone  
> Till all laughter is claws on your skin  
> And your moments of clarity scream the hell within  
> When you fade like a rose in the gloom  
> Love waits outside your room_  
> Love Will Come to You  
> Poets of the Fall

Willow got back into her car once she had finished the bulk shopping for the next four weeks. Boxes of tea, an immense amount of spaghettio cans, some planting dirt for her herbs and half a dozen bottles of Jack Daniels was really all she needed to survive until the end of June at the very least, she had no plans of ever leaving the yard until her next trip to the store.

Back to normal for the last time in months. Drive home, drop the key while unlocking the front door, shed outerwear and deposit the foodstuffs.

Routine.

Put the kettle on, heat spaghettios and then take a seat by the window to eat dinner and drink her tea in silence.

Routine.

Back to the computer once the mug was empty, finish up the last paperwork for the summer so she could reduce her useage of the device to a safety check of her mail every day - maybe every other day if she was lucky.

Routine.

Pour a glass of Jack and relax by the window, watching the familiar firefly visitors gather for their end-of-the-school-year-drunken-bonanza while she relaxed in the recliner covered in a soft blanket under the watchful eyes of the photo on the table.

Routine.

'Wait, that's strange.' Willow stirred from her almost-slumber. 'There's never more than one of the "knocking" fireflies per day, if they even show up at all, and now there's been two in just a couple of minutes?' She sat up to observe the second "knocker" of the day(a nickname that suddenly amused her greatly) and watched it eventually fade into nothingness.

She sat up for a few more minutes while she considered the feasibility of doing some research at this hour on why some fireflies exhibited those suicidal tendencies. 'Maybe they have more in common with human teenagers than I thought. I mean who hasn't been that wallflower at a rowdy party who felt like nothing else but just driving their head through a wall to make it all stop. At least it's better than the time I stumbled upon an apocalypse by taking a nap next to a random corpse.'

She realized the eventual outcome of the thought process and treated herself to an extra glass of Jack before allowing herself to fall asleep, for real this time.

Less than a minute after she finally lost consciousness the third "knocker" arrived outside her window.

* * *

  
First day of summer meant it was the first day of new routines. Well, it was the first day of slightly modified routines.

Early morning without any work led to a shower that was three times the usual length. Her usual comfortable clothes made way for more practical wear that allowed for her hobbyist gardening but the drab colors remained a staple. Nothing that could lead to obvious stains, nothing that could lead to reminding her of _your shirt_.

It was back to spaghettios for brunch and dinner and three cups of tea per day, all ending with her usual glass of whiskey by the firefly kegger. She noticed the first evening that the "knockers" had stopped visiting and amused herself with imagining them packing up their stuff for the summer and going to Florida to join the firefly keggers there on vacation. Eventually she would realize with a strange kind of sadness that the "knockers" would never return.

She spent her days reading and rereading her vast amount of books that filled the shelves that covered the walls of the barely lit house. The exception to this was during the two hours that followed the brunch spaghettios where she instead spent the time on her knees in the yard, trying to follow the HOAs strict guidelines while also growing plants for her own use.

The hour after dinner was spent on playing at being a herbalist in what would normally be the bedroom of the house. She had darkened the walls of the room and put up a series of lamps and humidity controllers. She grew rare - but _mostly_ legal - plants that she eventually would dry and ship to different magic shops around the country and sometimes even internationally. She didn't do any personal sales - nothing that invited strangers into her fiercely protected private sphere - and it was always she who contacted the stores as she actively worked to avoid name recognition.

She was better than she would ever admit when it came to the hobby. She hadn't experienced any store dropping her as a supplier due to quality or reliability. The only store that had to cancel their agreement was shut down after local police found out they sold illegal plants in the back of their store. Willow had lucked out and avoided any judicial investigation in her connection to the store but had become even more careful in what contacts she maintained as a result of that snafu.

Due to her infamy as the most powerful Wicca in this dimension - and her role in activating the Slayers and closing the Hellmouth - she knew that keeping her given name was a dumb risk rooted in vanity at best. She had taken the surname Mactrista knowing that if any old enemy or friend wanted to find her there would not be many Willow Rosenbergs in the world. By changing the surname she hoped that once they couldn't find her under her real name they'd expect her to go with a completely new name and either hunt some red herring or give up completely.

The classic double bluff. Or something like that. It had worked so far at least.

She was after five days into her summer routine when she realized there was a new kind of knocking in her life. Someone was at the door while she was drinking her dinner tea, watching the kegger.

She panicked. She had one visitor when she first moved in, the secretary of the Homeowner's Association, and none since. That was by design. She had planned to live a life of privacy, to avoid any risk of hurting those around her as she had before. She just wanted to live a life where she had the microscopic risk of being granted visitation rights to Tara's glorious afterlife. And then, after maybe half an eternity of ignored visits she could get the chance just to apologize for Tara for ruining her life, for being the cause of her death.

She didn't expect forgiveness, she never would. She didn't expect to even be able to talk to her, not after what she had done, but she had to live her life and try to get the shadow of a chance.

Not after Kingman's Bluff. Not after the Temple of Proserpexa.

She expected an eternal torment - probably by the First Evil for her insolence and rebukal of his attempt to take over the world in that last war - and she had grown a strange kind of acceptance of that fate. She had surmised that Angel and Faith were wrong, there was no kind of redemption for everyone. You only get the storybook ending when you end. When you die. And she would never be able to go out in a blaze of glory, saving the world. She would first become too reliant on her strength and become the cause of the apocalypse, not to stop it.

Good people stop apocalypses. Willow hasn't been one of those for a long time. She's the apocalypser, not apocalypse-ee. Both the last two the Scoobies had stopped in Sunnydale were due to her causing them.

The knocking continued and she realized that the visitor wouldn't go away. She put the cup of tea back on the table, accompanying the dirty plate that sat next to the Doll's Eye Crystal and the framed photo. Before unlocking the door she withdrew a thin blade from the umbrella stand and held it by the side of the door, out of view of any visitor.

Her mind had run wild with the possibilities of the mysterious visitor. Buffy coming to conscript her, Giles coming to detain her. Xander coming to spit at her cowardly face or Kennedy to try to kill her for disappearing.

Or boink her. She never did understand that woman.

Or maybe it was Amy coming for bitter revenge - _again -_ or some old demon trying to settle an old score. It could even be Faith - she was from the New England region after all - looking for a place to crash while passing through.

And maybe to boink. She understood Faith a lot better these days.

She also completely understood why Faith chose prison.

Maybe it was even Warren's parents who had somehow figured out her role in his death and who wanted revenge. She'd laugh in their faces if that were the case. Anyone who held him to any kind of worth that surpassed the rotting heap of flesh that he ended up as deserved nothing but her vitriol and scorn.

That the guest would be one of her wards from the GSA, the young Sandra Jones, was not a possibility that Willow had managed to entertain.

The teen offered a bright - but very shy - smile as she stood in the dark. "Hi miss Mactrista." She was dressed in a nice, but still very casual, sleeved blue dress and had her hair up in her favorite ponytailed manner.

"Uhh, hi miss Jones." Willow stood still, confused on the motive of her unexpected visitor. She was well-aware of Sandra's schoolgirl crush on her - not unlike the ones Willow had for both Giles and Calendar back in the day - and was afraid that the teen had completely misread Willow's support in school for something else entirely, something that could ruin both the teen's frail confidence and Willow's career.

"Call me Sandra, miss Mactrista. May I come in?"

Willow froze as she feared an everyday aspect of her old life was coming back to haunt her. She knew - very intimately - that vampires found and used the repressed urges of their dead hosts. A poor cute girl with a forbidden crush on a teacher would very likely go to feed and maybe even try to turn her after slaughtering their own family and closest friends.

"S-sure mis-" She corrected herself. "Sure, Sandra. And call me Willow." She stepped back, never voicing the invite in a way that would have allowed a vampire to cross the threshold. When the girl passed into the house she released the breath she didn't know she had held and carefully put the blade back into the umbrella stand.

"This is a nice home, Willow." She smiled as she scanned the dark room. It wasn't dirty or poorly maintained but it was far from hospitable, more resembling a shut-in's library than a place that people inhabited. Which, to be fair, was not entirely wrong. Willow didn't see herself as people and she was a shut-in if nothing else.

"I hope I'm not intruding." Sandra continued. "I was just in the area and one of your neighbors is a friend of the family and spoke of their 'silent but well-mannered new redheaded neighbor' so I figured out who you were pretty quickly." She flashed an innocent smile as she continued to survey the somber living room.

Willow liked the girl. Sandra was pretty smart and of a good heart, the similarities to Buffy in her teenage years were making themselves known the more she got to know Sandra. She did not, however, have any kind of romantic interest in the spirited tenth-grader. Even if she weren't almost ten years older she had long since realized that her last chance to be happy died in their bedroom, the victim of a cruel world who sent a rapist kill Tara and end the living of Willow when she was happier than she had ever been since.

She had never been one to subscribe to the soulmate idea. She had loved Oz, in her own way, but she had no illusion that they were the only ones for each others out of six billion people. She didn't believe she was The One for Tara either, far from it. The One would not violate her. Hurt her. Lie to her. Betray her. Lure her to a life of danger that took away the one light in Willow's life just because she happened to be so good that she forgave Willow despite everything she had to endure.

What she did know is that Tara was the only one for her. Tara was Willow's everything. Nothing, no-one, else could ever compare.

"Do your p-parents know you're here, Sandra?"

Sandra glanced into the opened door into the refurbished bedroom before she turned back to her CompSci teacher. "Yeah, they know. They really appreciate the support y'all gave me this spring and when I told them I'd go out to see if you wanted to talk they were okay with it. I mean it's barely 7PM right now so it's not like I'm breaking any curfew."

Willow nodded and calmed down slightly. With the parents knowing it put the biggest risk out of the way; the risk that there would be someone misinterpreting the visit as some illicit affair between the one gay teacher and one of her wards. She soon realized that the teen had seen her herbalist equipment and knew she had to explain the situation before the kid thought she was some suburban cartel boss.

"That's restorative herbs, nothing illegal. I grow them for other practitioners of Wicca who can't do it themselves for various reasons, they're used for religious and magical rituals."

"Magical? You mean you believe in elves and spells and such?" The girl looked at her curiously. She knew that miss Mactrista had a reputation as a rational and no-nonsense individual that listened to reason when a student would argue their point, she did not peg her as the superstitious type. "I don't mean anything by it, I just know very little about you and even less about Wicca. It's not exactly covered in school, you know?"

Willow smiled shyly to show the absence of ill will. "It's okay. What is magic may have different meaning to different people, even within Wicca. Dolly, for example, is very important to me as you must have realized. It was a gift from someone very important to me and it is more than any other kind of Doll's Eye Crystal, it's like it have a part of her spirit imbued."

Sandra observed the older woman's sad smile and didn't fail to see the pain hidden beneath, almost radiating in its clarity. She continued to pace around and was barely able to contain her shock at the sorry life her favorite teacher lived. Books, thousands of them and outnumbering the school library by a decent margin, but little else to her name. In the kitchen and by the living room's back window she saw one set of utensils, one mug, one set of plates, one glass and one empty bottle of Jack Daniels on the bench. There was no bed in the apartment, the blanket by the side of the recliner practically shouting that this was where she spent most of her day.

Willow herself was dressed in yoga pants and a black tank top, her hair braided to help maintain the wavy curls that was the only outward sign of any attempt to style herself in a fashion. Sandra didn't expect any kind of party girl from her introverted tutor but that she'd be in this state on her first friday off for the summer before 7PM was a shock even to her.

Then she saw the crystal they all knew as 'Dolly'. Next to it was a photo of a brown-haired woman looking up at the camera from the old tome she was reading. She was seated in what appeared to be some kind of library and offered a crooked smile that invited warmth. Her hooded blue eyes were matched by the hoodie that covered the grey patterned top. She was obviously looking at whoever took the picture and the look extruded unconditional love.

"So, that's her huh? The one who gave you Dolly?"

Willow figured that she had given out too much information when she earlier had talked about the crystal. "Yeah, that's Tare."

Sandra leaned forward to get a better view of the picture. Even though the table was stained and worn through use, the crystal and the picture were both in pristine condition, obviously held of more importance than anything else in the room.

"Do you want to talk about her? I mean I completely understand if you don't but I if you want to I'll listen. And I won't mum a word about it to anyone else, not even her existence. I know the value of privacy and trust." Sandra sat down in the recliner with her hands resting on her knees as she gave Willow her most reassuring smile.

Willow was torn. On one hand she felt it was incredibly inappropriate to talk about her private life. Not just with a student who held a teenage crush on her but also in general. She was private to a fault and often enjoyed it that way.

On the other hand she had always hated how her friends pretended how it was like Tara almost didn't exist after she had been murdered. It was as if they had almost scrubbed all traces of her existence once Willow returned from magic rehab. Even Dawn, the one who loved Tara almost as much as Willow did, barely ever mentioned her in the presence of Willow which often led her former foster parent to believe that she had gravely overestimated the affections the teenager held for the older Wicca.

"I could. I mean, only if you're absolutely certain." Sandra nodded. "Tara was born a year before me. Her dad and brother were abusive hicks who gaslit Tara and her mom into accepting physical and verbal abuse for years, barely being treated better than kept slaves. Tara's mom died when she was 17 and that last year alone - before she went to college was hell for her. She had to flee in the middle of her graduation as soon as she had gotten her papers and fled from Oregon to my hometown in California. I met her in my freshman year in a Wicca society and once I realized I was in love with her I also realized that I was kinda gay."

Willow smiled as she reminisced about one of the best times in her life. It was a year of danger, loneliness, betrayal and abandonment but it was one of exploration, magic, love and trust that she would and could never forget.

"You see, I was closeted until then. Even from myself. From the beginning of my junior year of High School I had a boyfriend. He had... anger issues but was never violent towards me. He had ways to control the anger and it wasn't really his fault that he got the issues anyway, it was something that was done to him." The confused look of the teen would have to remain, Willow was not going to induct her into the supernatural world. "Long story. Anyway, up until October of my college freshman year we were going steady. It was just something that was expected of me as the good jewish girl with the best grades and boyfriend and huge future prospects. Oh yeah, I'm ethnically jewish but it's not of importance to me anymore so nevermind that. I loved him, in a way, but these days I also know it was because he was really the first person to ever really show any romantic affection to me at all."

She sighed as she put the dirty dishes into the sink.

"He cheated on me with another musician. I was actually desperate enough to try to patch things up but he just left the night he was caught and then expected me to sit around and wait for him without any word of him at all. I didn't even know he was alive." She realized she was getting riled up and the wounds still felt fresh almost seven years later. "I was in a hole but joined a Wicca society to find some way to ground my identity. It was a bust as almost everyone there were trendy posers but that was where I met Tara. She was far too shy for someone with her enormous amount of love and kindness and especially for someone that gorgeous."

She caught herself staring at the photo with a smile. "She accidently ran into me while fleeing, well, some very aggressive men. We managed to escape the group and barricade ourselves in a laundry room and struck up a friendship from there. She was out, I weren't. It wasn't until she declared her love for me that something switched in my brain and everything fell to place. I remained in the closet to everyone but her for quite some time and we were really glad she had a single in her dorm."

Sandra giggled as she listened to her teacher being more open than Sandra thought she could ever be.

"Then Oz, the ex, returned. He thought we could go back to what we had just because he had gotten a handle of his anger. Phooey to that, he lashed out and tried to attack Tara once he realized we were together and then left the city again. Which was good because I'd have crushed his balls with a rusty flail if he hadn't."

The girl looked at her with shock, awe and confusion.

"A flail is a medieval weapon, a spiked ball attached to a handle with a chain. Not important. I came out during the events of his return where my friends had expected me to come back to my ex who was an old friend of theirs. But then soon after that we all became friends again. Tara especially became something of a bonus sister to my roomie's - who was also my best friend - younger sister. When Tara turned 20 her family arrived and tried to force her back into slavery-in-all-but-name but we all stood up for her and chased them out of town. That day was one of the best days of my life, dancing with her in the club we had rented for her party. Then things went bad. My roommate's mother died and the dad was a deadbeat so the roomie had to drop out to support her sister. Tara was attacked by a religious cult," She gave a glance that screamed 'don't ask' to her solo audience, "and she were force-fed a kind of drug that almost gave her permanent brain damage."

She wiped the corner of her eye with a paper towel.

"She got better but at the same time my roomie was apparently killed by the same cult. Her sister - who was about to turn fifteen - was suddenly alone so me and Tara moved in with her and became foster parents. We were barely adults but Dawnie, the sister, needed help. It was horrible and the loss of my best friend was crippling for us but it was also kind of lovely for our makeshift family. We eventually found out that she wasn't dead though, that she had been kidnapped and hid away. We and some other friends freed her but she was so traumatized by the entire affair that she wished to go back."

Willow cringed inwardly, she didn't like to lie and hated to minimize her own grave mistakes and bad choices of that time but she couldn't tell the complete truth without involving magic.

"I didn't handle it well. I got addicted and spiraled, bad. I mistreated Tara while using the drugs in a way that should've been unforgivable and she left me, as was right to do. I almost killed Dawnie while DUIng and then went cold turkey. Against all odds and reason Tara later forgave me and we got back together. I was on cloud nine and we promised ourselves to each other for eternity, everything was perfect."

"Turns out that eternity was less than 36 hours for us." The blissful look changed to a stone-cold grimace in an instant. "A wanted rapist and murderer shot my friend, almost killing her, and Tara was killed by a stray bullet. Straight through the heart, dead on her feet. The asshole got what was coming for him but Tara died for no good reason. She had never hurt a soul but was constantly forced to suffer pain and abuse until the world decided to just end it all."

Sandra looked at her with sympathy, teary-eyed but silent as to not interrupt the telling. Willow handed her a paper towel that she accepted without a word.

"I fell off the wagon and hurt all my friends again. They sent me to rehab but nothing was the same when I returned. My old roomie opened a house for stray teenage girls and I was basically drafted to help out. At the same time I got into a rebound relationship that was doomed to fail and after our city fell into a giant sinkhole and became what is now known as the Sunnydale Crater Bay I lost everything that remained of Tara. All our memories were there. Her grave, her belongings, her pictures. Other than that photo which I had in my jacket and the crystal that I never left home without there was nothing left of Tara Maclay."

"Wait!" Sandra suddenly interrupted. "I remember when that happened! You're from Sunnydale? It was weird how an entire city would just disappear like that, sinkhole or not. Especially how nobody died in the accident."

Willow shrugged. "I was on the last bus out and the claims of a perfect evacuation are, well, bullshit. I lost friends that day. Anya was the ex of my oldest friend, Amanda was Dawnie's classmate. We barely made it out in a stolen bus. But my life was over and I left the group after that and haven't met them since. I finished my education in Boston and then got hired as a teacher here."

Willow smiled without any joy. "So yeah, that's her. Tara was my everything - she still is - but she's gone and there's nothing I can do about it."

Sandra stood up and gave a bold hug to her teacher. "Thank you for telling me Willow. I'm sorry for your loss." She had gotten what she asked for; the story of the enigmatic miss Mactrista. In the process, however, she was also given the realization that she would never have a chance with the object of her affection. Willow was obviously still grieving, she probably would for years, and was in no way open for any kind of secret sexy affair. It hurt her but she knew that it was probably for the best in the long run.

"Thank you yourself, both for listening and the rest. I appreciate your discretion in this, I just don't want people to know too much about me. Too much Private McPrivatey, you know?"

Sandra released her with a smile. "Yeah, I know a bit about necessary privacy."

They continued to talk for a while after that, the subjects ranging from Sandra's plans for the summer to the fireflies and the different herbs Willow was growing. She was growing more guarded as the time ran on so Sandra called it a day an hour after first showing up at her front door. When her parents came to pick her up the final anxieties about the nature of the visit were put to rest for Willow. She closed the door and turned around while internally debating if she were to get another cup of tea.

The door behind her opened and she cursed herself for not remembering to lock it as the previous disturbance of her routine had obviously rattled her more than she first realized.

"Sandra, did you forget something? I'm okay with you coming here you know, but please knock if you do so."

"Sweetie?"

Willow's veins grew cold as ice and she turned around to face an exact copy of her dead girlfriend.

_"Oh."_


	4. Choice Millionaire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It's a wide wide world out there  
>  And life can be a love affair  
> Or a cage of sheer despair  
> You're a choice millionaire  
> It's a wide wide world out there  
> You can travel in your easy chair  
> So build your castles in the air  
> You're a choice millionaire_  
> Choice Millionaire  
> Poets of the Fall

_Three years ago_

She heard the voice of her younger sister, the mere presence of her reminding Buffy why it had all been worth it. "Yeah Buffy. What are we gonna do now?"

Buffy's smile grew wide and she turned to the group to offer words of comfort, of gratitude for their collective efforts and sacrifices despite all they had faced together. But just as she opened her mouth to answer her baby sister she instead just blinked out of existence altogether.

She suddenly materialized in a white void. She didn't feel anything. No noises, smells, cold, heat or anything but an infinite void of white emptiness.

"Okay, what gives?"

No response.

"Is this about destroying Sunnydale? Because I don't have time to negotiate with otherworldly insurance investigators, I got a family to take care of and a bunch of kids who need to get back home."

Still nothing.

"Just-... Just send me back if you're gonna give me the cold shoulder! Except here I guess it'd be a lukewarm shoulder. Still, suit up or send me back!"

She tried to stomp the ground in frustration but got no sound, not even the touch of hitting solid ground was felt to give her an outlet to her frustrations.

"Wow you really haven't gotten better at chilling out, have you? Still the same Crybuffy I left behind in Sunnydale four years ago."

Cordelia's form materialized in front of Buffy with a smirk and the Slayer just knew she was messing around with her.

"Oh? At least I don't try to hook up with my friends' exes."

The retort was weak and Buffy knew it. Cordelia was in charge here and she would have had the time to prepare her barbs.

"No you're just happy to jump into the bed with the first vampire - souled or unsouled - that gives you the time of day."

'Wait, how much did Willow tell her when she visited LA this spring to collect Faith?' she pondered. Buffy hated being the one flailing in the darkness. The very bright and white darkness.

She really hated this place.

"At least I'm not getting pregnant with my crush's son, I got some standards here."

Cordelia looked as if she had been struck.

"HEY! That was a turncoat Power That Be that was in control of my body, not me. I've been here since roughly when Willow went all evil-eyed. What a thing that was, 'in the calmest waters' as they say. Who's 'they' by the way? Still, I've always known you couldn't trust that boyfriend stealing fashion catastrophe, she didn't even recognize that it was someone else driving my body a couple of weeks ago."

Buffy didn't have the strength to contest the point. She had ignored the warning signs around Willow - even before she died and was brought back - and had actively promoted the use of dark magic when it served their purpose. She still did it, she would do whatever it took to win the never-ending wars against evil. Even if it cost her the soul of her best friend.

"Cordy, just tell me what you want? I have friends waiting for me."

"Fine, ruin my fun will you. I rarely get the chance to advice old friends as an agent of the Powers That Be and when I finally get the chance it's Buffy the Happiness Slayer?"

Cordelia was back to her carefree attitude that the Scoobies had experienced in the past.

"Anyway, I'm here to reward you. Not me personally; the PTBs want to grant you one wish as thanks for turning the tide in the war against their enemies, not just the First Evil. And before you ask, this is no Anyanka wishy-washy curse. You'll be informed of the consequences before you finalize your wish and as long as it's in their power it'll be done, no muss no fuzz."

Buffy was staggered by Cordelia pre-empting her first three questions. Was this part of her seer power? Or maybe it was because of her new status as an agent of the Powers That Be? Or maybe it was just old and annoyingly observant Queen C showing off.

"So... Sealing all the Hellmouths and that type of wishes are off-limit?" Cordelia nodded. "How much time do I got?"

"Well that's actually the only real drawback. We need to know within five-ish minutes. Don't ask me why, orders from above. Probably to avoid legal mumbo jumbo that could cause more trouble than it's worth, Wolfram & Hart have taught us to never butt heads with the lawyers of evil if we can avoid it. Don't rush it though, you'll only be gone a couple of minutes from your friends. Oh and no wishing for more wishes either. We're going full Aladdin here."

"How about bringing someone back from the dead?"

Cordelia smiled. "That's no problem. As long as their soul is unbound and they're willing you can bring them back with you, no problemo! They'll arrive dressed, fully conscious and well-fed. And yes, you'll be allowed to speak with them before making your final decision so no accidently wasting the wish. And before you ask, I'm happy here and won't say yes."

Buffy had the decency to blush, bringing Cordelia back was far from the top of her priorities. She also knew that Cordelia already had realized that and wondered if she pre-emptily denied the offer to save face for both of them. But Buffy already knew what she was going to do.

"Bring me Spike."

Cordelia closed her eyes and briefly glowed with an otherworldly aura before she opened them again with a frown.

"Sorry but his soul is apparently bound. It's weird, I saw him doing the Big Standy thing and he should be available but he's not. Sorry about that, not much I can do. Especially since I don't know where his soul is."

Buffy sighed as she realized that it was probably some drawback of the way he achieved his soul. Plan B then.

"How about mom? Can I bring her back or will the cancer get her again somehow?"

Cordelia repeated the process and didn't look any happier.

"She isn't willing. Partly because you're right; she would still have her health issues, but also she said no and gave no option for reconsidering it. She says 'hi' though!"

Buffy started to pace back and forth. 'What's the point with these wishes if they can't actually do anything. They got more drawbacks than magic and seems even more unreliable. No wonder Anya loved to dish them out to mess with people. Wait!'

"How about Anya?"

Cordelia didn't even start the process again, shaking her head with a sad expression.

"Sorry, she's D'Hoffryn's property now. Part of her initial contract of becoming a demon actually. A contract she signed twice even. So you can't even use a single wish to release her from the contact to get to a better afterlife. It's a shame but she knew what she was doing both times."

Buffy growled in frustration. 'I need some help here. Why can't Giles come here? Or no, he'd just advice me to not take the help from people who he can't control. And Willow is far too deep into her never-ending slump to be of any use, she'd-'

"Tara," she suddenly exclaimed. "Tara Maclay! Can I bring her back?"

Cordelia repeated the process again and this time she opened her eyes with a smile, one returned threefold by Buffy once she saw who was standing next to the former cheerleader.

"Hi Buffy!"

The Slayer ran up to embrace her old confidante but only met air. She pouted in confusion and disappointment.

"What? You're just here to say no to the offer as well?"

Tara laughed, having seen the entire meeting from her favorite place in the Summerland.

"No Buffy, I guess it's just the rules here. If you want to waste your wish on me I'll accept it with joy and gratitude."

Buffy grinned. "Score! But, uh, you won't be all suicidey like I was when I returned?"

Tara shook her head with a reassuring smile. "No, I won't. I want to live, both now and for a long time."

Buffy started to fiddle with her fingers, shifting her eyes back and forth. "Uhh, you know what happened back home? With Willow and the city and Kennedy and-"

"I know. I mean, I'll forget everything past my death once we return but I also know I'll learn to live with it and I feel it's still worth it. I know Willow is with Kennedy, I don't fault her for it. I'm not coming back for her OR for you or even Dawnie. I'm coming back for me. I'm not going to lie though, I'd love if Willow were to choose me again but I do not expect it at all."

Buffy turned to Cordelia with a grin and Tara followed suit.

"I wish to bring back Tara Maclay with me. Oh, and thanks Cordy. Sorry about the whole dying thing."

Cordelia shrugged. "Meh, I've had worse. And good luck Buffy, you'll need it! And it was nice to meet you Tara. Say hi to Willow and Xander for me."

The two Scoobies shifted slightly and then appeared back where Buffy had been by the crater before Cordelia had given her the wish.

* * *

  
What Buffy returned to was pandemonium. She saw Giles shouting in a cellphone, clearly upset at something. Buffy also heard but didn't immediately see Dawn who was calling out for her. Xander was held high by his collar by an enraged Kennedy with tears in her eyes while Faith was looking for something - or someone - beneath the worn school bus.

And then - to make it all worse - Tara collapsed to the ground next to her. Kennedy heard the commotion and dropped the one-eyed man as she paced to Buffy, eyes red with tears and rage.

"Where is Willow?"

Buffy knelt down and checked Tara's pulse. All seemed good, it was just the shock of reviving.

"Buffy, where the hell is Will?"

The Slayer took a deep breath to calm her already overly frayed nerves and lifted up Tara in a fireman's carry.

"Is Willow gone? I was kind of preoccupied elsewhere."

Kennedy looked down at the girl. She recognized the face but couldn't place it but she did know the girl wasn't one of their group.

"Cyclops said she vanished seconds after you did. He said she was quitting being a Scoobie and was not going to come back, that she was dumping me! Please tell me she was with you, please tell me you know how to find her!"

Then Buffy almost collapsed herself. Had Willow just waited for a few minutes she'd have realized what was going to happen. If she had managed to contain her impulses just this once she'd see what Buffy had brought back, who Buffy had brought with her from the other side.

Yet she also felt for Kennedy. The two Slayers rarely got along - both being hesitant to work well with others and far too stubborn for their own good - but she knew that Kennedy cared for Willow much more than vice versa. Kennedy never understood Tara's importance to Willow - or to Dawn for that matter - and her constant inability with attempting to understand the mystical parts that were so essential to Willow's identity meant that they had a distance that could never really be crossed.

"If she is gone there's not much we can do right now. She can teleport wherever she wants and I'm carrying probably the only person who can find her."

"Oh yeah? Who is she?" Kennedy looked skeptical as she was still unable to grasp that Willow had left her by her own will.

"Buffy!" Dawn's screech called to attention that Buffy had come back and people started to move towards her with Dawn leading the pack in a sprint. "Where did you go? Willow is gone and everything is going wrong and **OHMYGODISTHATTARA**?"

Buffy and Kennedy cringed at the teen's loudness and Buffy muttered something about her sister still needing to be housetrained. Tara seemed to recognize the sound though and started to stir in Buffy's arms.

"Hey Dawnie. W-what's going on? Why aren't we back home and shouldn't you be in school by now?"

Dawn grew pale as a ghost even as she kissed Tara's forehead. She turned to her sister with her hand gently resting on Tara's head. "Buffy, _what did you do_?"

The others had seen the commotion and those that recognized the carried witch moved up to join them. Xander moved up to Buffy and took over the job of carrying the exhausted woman towards the bus, giving a still-injured Buffy the chance to get a few moments of physical rest. He looked back to his friend's tired expression.

"Buffster, what's going on? How did Tara get here?"

She sighed, she wouldn't get the chance to even sit down for a moment at this rate. 'Better to get it over with at once so we can find some shelter before it got too dark.'

"The Powers That Be gave me a wish as reward for stopping the First Evil. It had a bunch of rules but the short of it is that I got to ask Tara if she wanted to come back and she said yes."

The witch looked up from Xander's arms with her squinted eyes locking with Buffy's.

"What? I don't... I last saw you making up with Xander in your backyard."

Buffy ignored the interruption and continued. "They told me that she wouldn't remember anything since, well, you know? Still, she wanted to come back. Now she's back and you tell me that suddenly Willow is missing?"

Kennedy backed away with realization coloring the hateful gaze she directed at Buffy. Giles removed his glasses and let loose a frustrated sigh.

"Buffy, _please_ don't tell me you've doomed the poor girl to suffer the same trauma that you still begrudge Willow for?"

Dawn slapped his arm and glared daggers at him, angry at his immediate attempt to question and judge Tara's return.

"I told you," Buffy hissed, "Tara was asked first and she said yes without a doubt."

"So you really hate me this much," Kennedy growled at her. "You hate me so much that you go into the afterlife to bring back my Red's ex to split us apart? Are you really that jealous of anyone else having influence over her life?"

Before Buffy could snipe back she saw Kennedy getting thrown back half a dozen yards. In her place stood Faith - the only member of the elder Scoobies(who wasn't Willow) who actually really liked Kennedy.

"Hey brat? Get bent. Red already told Xander you were over, didn't she? She told me back when she drove me from LA what she had experienced these last three years and you know what? It's up to Red to decide her own life, she's earned that much. I don't like her disappearing any more than you do but I think I get why she did it even if you don't. Blondie here coming back is a wicked miracle even if Red isn't here, don't think this is all about your spoiled ass. I'm sorry that it's over between the two of you but don't blame B or Blondie for your pain."

The group stared at her as if she had grown a second head. What they hadn't realized was that Willow had confided more in her the last few weeks than the rest had noticed. Faith felt their confused glares but tried to shake them off. It was obvious to her that they hadn't realized that Willow needed to talk to someone else who had gone dark but was trying to do better. They could never really see further than their nose when it came to that kind of pain, if it wasn't completely black and white it wasn't worth their notice.

"Alright Faith, stand down. You too Kennedy. She is right though, this was never about you. It was about Tara. I didn't bring her back for Willow, I brought her back for Tara." She looked at her recovering friend with a smile. "Now then; we need to load up and get to LA. We're going to Angel's hotel but first we need to check in a bunch of you to a hospital. Willow teleported god-knows-where and as much as I want to we can't do anything to find her right now. We're spent and need to rest and lick our wounds."

* * *

  
It was dark when they entered the off-ramp from the highway. Tara had recovered and rested her head at Dawn's shoulders, both just finding comfort in a familiar friendship that was once lost to a random bullet. They hadn't spoken much since they got on the bus, it had mostly been Tara reassuring the teen that she was fine and didn't need anything at the moment but her support and comfort. Dawn had told her of their current circumstances and of their home being lost and of the death of Anya and the awakening of all the Slayers. She had also told Tara that she had been dead for year.

"Dawnie?" The teen turned to her with a waiting smile. "Can you tell me what happened? The last thing I remember is Willow being covered in blood and then falling down."

The teen shifted in her seat having expected this question for a while but still not sure how to approach it properly.

"Are you sure you want to know? It's really Will's story to tell, I don't want to overstep-"

"I'm sure. I don't know how or when we'll find her and I can't wait forever to find out the truth. I trust you to be honest even when it might feel better or safer to fib a bit, okay?"

Dawn swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded nervously.

"Okay. But please listen to everything before you get mad at Will. She's had a very hard time but she is much better now. Well, better than how it was after you... Better than _then_." Tara nodded as she was preparing for the worst.

"Okay. You were killed on May 7 a year ago. Warren - the psycho nerd head honcho - shot at Buffy and almost killed her. One of the shots went wide and you were killed by a bullet through the heart. Willow held you as you died. She summoned Osiris," Tara's eyes went wide and she sat up as already the story had outgrown her expectations. "Yes, she summoned the real Osiris. She tried to force him to bring you back and he refused, claiming that a bullet is a natural death."

"Wait, what? I was murdered by an evil man who tried to end the Slayer, that's natural to him?"

Dawn shrugged. "I know I know, it was bullcrap. Willow thought so too and hurt him bad enough to banish him from our dimension according to Giles. Keep in mind that this is pieced from what I remember and what Willow, Andrew and the others told me so some details may be wrong and you'll have to ask Will about it once we get her back. Anyways, she stormed out and found out Warren killed you and put Buffy on her deathbed. So she went to the Magic Box and drained all the dark magic from the tomes there and absorbed them into her own spirit."

Tara whimpered and Faith extended a napkin from the seats in front of them while acting as Tara's guard in case Kennedy got another bout of the mad envies.

"She used the magic to save Buffy so that was good. Xander said that she was dying on the operating table before Willow saved her. But then she convinced Buffy and Xander to drive her as she tried to hunt down Warren. They eventually did find and destroy a bot he made to trick her and then she teleported away from them. I wasn't there though. They only found me once they got back home after Willow ditched them."

"Found you? Oh yeah, you were at school. What were you doing at home?"

Dawn looked elsewhere as she whispered. "...keeping you company."

Tara realized the meaning behind the words and embraced the sobbing teen as she let out some badly-repressed tears. Faith handed them another napkin, listening to the story while keeping her distance. Dawn and Tara had realized that Faith was tuning in but didn't mind as it was obvious Faith had heard most of it from Willow herself some time over the last few weeks.

"Buffy sent me to Clem - that floppy demon guy - to keep me safe but that wasn't a good plan. I convinced him to lead me to Rack who was Will's old dark magic dealer. Meanwhile Anya was back to her demony self and helped Buffy and Xander find Willow. They arrived just as Willow hunted Warren down outside the city. There they saw her flay him alive and burn his body."

Tara gasped but Dawn continued sternly. "Do you want to know something? I'm glad she did that. He killed you and tried to kill both Buffy and Willow. Let's not forget his ex that he murdered after he tried to rape her. He put an axe into Willow's back before she caught up to him too you know? If she hadn't become invulnerable by then he would've killed her too. And to be honest I often think she would've liked that more. She gave up her spirit for revenge but she wanted the pain to end, she never wanted to be without you."

Dawn took a deep breath and let Tara rest her head in the teen's lap.

"Willow did lose control after killing Warren. The dark magics corrupted her spirit and she went bananas and teleported to the police to kill the other two nerds from the trio. In the process she put Rack in a coma and, err, tried to turn me back into the key." Tara's eyes grew wide again in shock but Dawn held up her hand to prevent interruptions. "It's okay. I know she was out of it and I've forgiven her long ago. Please try to do the same because she wasn't herself. To make a long story short she easily beat up Anya, Buffy and Giles in the Box, destroying it in the process. And then as an encore she kinda, well, wenttoendtheworldbyanoldtemplebythecliffs."

Tara felt her body growing numb. She hadn't expected her worst nightmares to be as bad as what she was hearing.

"Once again, in her twisted mind - that was corrupted by grief and dark magic - she was trying to do good. She wanted to end everyone's suffering in her own troll-logicy way. Xander stopped her though," She giggled at Tara's continuously shocked expression, "yeah I know, who'da thunk it? But eventually Giles took her to England to some witchy rehab and she returned after the summer. She was hurting, she still is. She cried for you almost every night when she returned and spent every chance she got by your grave."

Faith handed them a juice package each and Tara was starting to get curious what kind of stash the Slayer was keeping and how she had obtained it.

"Then this whole mess started. The embodiment of the First Evil arrived and started killing potential Slayers worldwide. Some came to us for protection and Buffy built a small army. Anya became a human again and Willow eventually got into a rebound relationship with that angry Slayer from before, Kennedy. Trust me when I say that it was just a rebound. I mean once she decided to leave the only thing she did was end it with Kennedy so she wouldn't wait for her. And I get it you know? Panic in the face of the worst apocalypse we've ever faced and all that."

Tara nodded. She understood Dawn's argument on a logical level but could not deny that it hurt to realize that Willow had been with someone else. For Willow it had been many months but for Tara it was only earlier that day that they had their morning snuggles. The heart is very rarely a rational thing.

"Will really stepped up, Tara. She respect the magic, maybe even too much, but she managed to create and cast the spell that made every potential into a full-blown Slayer. Without her and Spike's sacrifice we would've died today, the world would've fallen to the First Evil. It cost us our homes and our friends though. And for Willow it seems to have become too much. I don't know - I didn't see her leave - but she'll be back once we tell her you're back, I promise!"

Tara nodded reassuringly but was far from confident that it was the truth of the matter. For Willow to abandon her friends and the only real family she's known she'd had to be broken in a way that Tara wasn't sure she could recover from. She looked out the window, seeing little else but the sky from her position in Dawn's lap, and cried silently over the suffering her family had experienced in the wake of her death.


	5. Illusion & Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _So can you name your demon?  
>  Understand its scheming  
> I raise my glass and say "here's to you"  
> Can you chase your demon?  
> Or will it take your freedom?  
> I raise my glass and say "here's to you"_  
> Illusion & Dream  
> Poets of the Fall

_Two years and six months ago_

Tara groaned in frustration as she slammed the front door of the small studio apartment. She had moved in with Faith on a bad lease and shared the Cleveland apartment building with most of the leadership of the Slayer Organization that Buffy had formed in the last six months.

With no other real alternatives on what to do with her life - her legal status was tentative at best as she was still considered deceased - she had joined what remained of her chosen family when they migrated from Angel's hotel in Los Angeles to the closest active Hellmouth in Cleveland, Ohio.

Money was always tight for the fledgling organization. Access to most of the vast resources of the old Watchers' Council were lost with the destruction of their headquarters a year earlier and few of the old guard remained. Giles was the most senior member and the number of identified and recruited Slayers grew for each week, taxing the limited resources beyond normal limits.

She had hoped - and had been promised - that she would get the chance and resources to properly seek out the still missing Willow. She knew her girl - and she still considered Willow to be the only one for her - was keeping Xander informed of her physical well-being with quarterly emails. Willow had also, however, told him that she would not even open any replies to her cold updates, remaining firm in her decision to be kept out of the struggles between the Slayers and the different groups that opposed them. Tara had asked him to write to Willow and inform her of Tara's return but the lack of any kind of response confirmed the witch's intent to stay out their world for good.

At least that was the alternative Tara dared to think of. The other was that she knew that Tara was alive again but wanted nothing to do with her anymore. The fear of this possibility kept niggling at the back of her brain but she refused to give it much credit, especially after their friends had been very adamant of Willow's despair and longing for her in the year that she had been gone.

The third alternative - that Willow had killed herself and put up an automated mailing script to falsify her good health - was one that not even her darkest fears ever dared to entertain. What she had told Anya the night they brought Buffy back still rang true; she would feel it in her soul if Willow were ever to die. Their magic had connected their spirits in a way that no time or distance could ever separate them and she felt that connection establish again as soon as Buffy had brought her back to the land of the living.

The source of her current frustration was that very same person. She knew she would be forever indebted to Buffy for bringing her back and it was a debt that weighed heavy on her mind. Today Buffy had wielded it as a cudgel by reminding Tara that she wasn't brought back to spend her entire life looking for someone who didn't want to be found. Buffy had reminded Tara to live her own life and if that just happened to coincide with the current goal to relocate the Slayer Organization to a castle they had acquired on the cheap in Scotland; so much better!

Tara ground her teeth as she realized she didn't have much of an argument to stand on for remaining in the states. She wanted to stay in the US as she knew that Willow had only left the country once and the risk of being located in the old Council's homeland was too great. She estimated that Willow would stay in the English-speaking world as the only languages she had applied her talented studying abilities to learn had been the dead languages they used in spells and research. She had hoped to get the time to dedicate her efforts fully to find her lost lover and moving to the United Kingdom was a heavy step in the opposite direction.

But Buffy had pushed and she relented. Instead it was Faith that would remain in Cleveland and lead the local department of Slayers together with the former principal Robin Wood. The rest of the Slayers leadership would relocate to Scotland within the week and then split up to the different regions they'd begin to establish their different branches as their reach grew. As the resident hedge witch they had repeatedly reminded her of her utmost importance as their new 'Big Gun', the role that Willow had previously held but then abdicated when she had disappeared six months earlier.

With each day that passed Tara was starting to understand Willow's choice better and better. She knew she had miles to go before she could fill the big - but still very tiny - sneakers of the most powerful witch in their dimension. She also knew that she did not want to fill those shoes.

The Slayers treated her magic as a tool which chafed against both her personal principles and her will. The lone reprieve was that they had at least respected her complete and total refusal to even casually dabble in the dark magics that Willow had managed to master - first while ignoring the dangerous side effects and then by managing to prevent them altogether.

Faith wasn't home and Tara yet again had the apartment for herself. The two had grown close over the months and became natural friends after Faith had approached Tara with an apology and with tales of her recent interactions with Willow. She also provided the witch with an insight into someone scarred by their own faults and mistakes but who tried to better themselves through helping others - providing a much appreciated counterweight to the black and white perspective that Tara and her friends had often applied to both themselves and others.

Faith had also tried to come on to her a couple of times but backed off once Tara made it clear it was not and would never be an option, leaving them to restrict themselves to friendly flirting that served as friendly banter for them.

Other than Faith it was Dawn that was the most obvious confidante to Tara's thoughts. Buffy hadn't wanted to restore the strengthening bond between her and Tara - the General Buffy role that Buffy had adopted over the last eighteen months was one that Tara wasn't comfortable with - and their friendship was almost as distant as it had been before Tara's 20th birthday. Giles was away most of the time while seeking out and recruiting new Slayers to the organization. Not that the two had ever been that close in the first place despite the mutual appreciation of their respective fields of expertise.

Xander had talked a lot with her in the beginning and confided in Tara his grief over Anya's death in a way he couldn't with the others, especially ever since Willow had left the group. Within the group only Xander and Tara had really gotten close to Anya and after Giles abandoned them all following Buffy's resurrection their already shaky friendship had simply fallen into disrepair.

The loss of Anya hit them both harshly and provided a mutual bond of sorts in the beginning. In the last few months Tara and Xander had grown apart again as his refusal to accept that Willow was worth the effort of being found. He considered her rash and sudden departure to be a betrayal to the entire group but in particular to him personally. It had become such a divisive issue and unfortunately became the wedge that would ensure their continued emotional distance. Tara refused to back down on her stance of finding Willow despite her acknowledgement of his grievances and their friendship more and more reverted to bitter arguing as the Willow subject somehow always appearing when they spoke.

Tara had lobbied for remaining in Cleveland - an action many late-night comedians would consider to be the first sign of an impending apocalypse - but Buffy had a pair of the Devon Coven's witches assigned there in her place. She claimed a familiar witch was needed close to her instead than a stranger that wouldn't fully understand the group dynamics. What Tara herself wanted was not really something that Buffy paid much heed to in that question as she claimed her role as Head Slayer gave her better insight into their needs than any other could understand.

Buffy had become a lot more ruthless since she was brought back from the dead, that much was obvious to those around her. She had assigned - not asked - Dawn and Andrew to the Rome branch of the organization and used two other Slayers as body doubles and risked their lives to draw danger and fire from her, much like infamous dictators were known to do. It was not something Tara supported and her silence on the matter was not something Buffy were able to afford and the issue became a recurring and contested subject during strategic meetings and gatherings.

Buffy had filled the leadership with her closest loyal friends and allies and as such ensured that the Slayer Organization would grow in the direction she wanted it to. Xander, Andrew, Giles, Wood, Vi and Kennedy formed an inner council that Tara nominally was part of as the expert on many things mystical. In actuality she was only there to fill a role rather an opinion and if she or anyone else went against the majority voice - Buffy's voice - they were promptly ignored.

She still had the debt she felt that she owed Buffy. Buffy was still her friend - of sorts - and she did owe her resurrection to her actions. So she'd go with them to Scotland and things would be better. Eventually. Dawn was scheduled to join them once she had graduated and Tara could learn a lot from the Devon Coven that she would never be able to experience in the run-down apartment she lived in. Yes, the future looked bright for Tara Maclay. She would be happier there and do a lot of good.

Maybe one day she'd even believe it herself.

* * *

  
_One year and five months ago_

Tara went to bed and prepared for another night of poor sleep. She rarely got more than a couple of hours per night these days and the workdays grew longer and longer as her responsibilities grew. Somehow - despite her repeated opposition to many of the decisions the leaders kept making - she had kept her position as the representative of all witches and warlocks within the organization. That meant that she was in charge of maintaining the protective spells around the castle, providing magical support for the alpha teams, organizing the training for newly recruited wiccans and also handling much of the magical healing necessary in an organization that thrived on physical feats.

She was more and more often going to bed completely drained of her ability to cast magic and wouldn't even be able to light a candle if she wanted to. With Tara being pushed to greater feats with every passing month she was in turn forced to lean on the Coven for support. It was a sore subject with them and something that had started to cause backlash from an increasingly independent-minded gathering of witches.

They hadn't completely withdrawn their support of the organization - yet - but they had been more and more distant with the Slayer Organization. On the other hand they had repeatedly underlined to Tara that it was the Slayers they were getting frustrated with and not her. They also informed her that she would always be welcome within their group if she ever left her current assignment.

Maclay was kind of stuck though. She had no saved money and her 'job' didn't really pay except in room and board and some petty cash for clothing. Even if she wanted to strike out on her own she would have nowhere else to go - the Coven wasn't a full-time occupation but rather an association of witches. Since she was still officially dead all of her paltry savings had been inherited by her father and brother as her last remaining legal family and she knew she would never see that money again. Even her high school and college records were gone as they were buried at the same time her body was put in the ground.

Dawn had gone on to college in California by now and Faith was somewhere in the US which left Tara increasingly isolated. To make it even worse Kennedy had been appointed to head of security at their headquarters. It led to repeated forced interactions between the two exes of Rosenberg and they never managed to completely shake off that initial rivalry and distrust. There was never any violence or even threats of violence but it was not conductive to a healthy work environment for any of them.

Especially not for a Tara that was feeling more lonely as more and more of her social circle moved away. There were few witches and many Slayers and since Kennedy interacted with many of the fighters - both on duty and when training - she had grown a healthy social circle of young women and girls who looked up to her as a veteran of the Sunnydale Hellmouth and often took her side by default when Tara clashed with her.

Out of Tara's old friends few had remained in Scotland. She got along with Buffy outside of their respective offices but they argued almost daily over the use - both the amount and application - of magic in service to the organization. The increasingly militarized structure of the group also caused conflicts between them and Tara had to be escorted out by Xander - for her own safety - the time when she reminded Buffy of her own history of rebellion against strict hierarchies and the almost forced conscription of teenage girls. It was something that the old Council had started but the Slayers now themselves continued in their stead.

To make everything even more frustrating for her she no longer had any energy left to try any kind of magical search attempts to find Willow. By using public records Dawn had found thousands of Willows in the United States but not a single Willow Rosenberg. They had also tried Willow Danielle and Danielle Rosenberg but with no successes. Any magic Tara had managed to try was too weak as her efforts were drained by her overworked schedule and the rescinded support from the Coven meant that she had no other magical sources to draw from.

One thing above all others kept her up at night. For months there had been Slayers who were starting to lobby for the use of dark magic, completely ignorant of the consequences. The leading council hadn't voiced those suggestions at first as they knew of Tara's unrelenting opinion on the matter. But that day it was Kennedy who had finally broken the unspoken rule and suggested the use of it at the weekly gathering.

Tara had pretended she didn't hear the suggestion and motioned to move to the next subject but Kennedy had stood her ground and repeated herself. She still said nothing but after Kennedy's third attempt - this time more forceful in her tone - and Tara had decided that if they were not going to respect her principles then she would not respect theirs either.

So she promptly stood up and left the room without saying a word, ignoring Xander's attempt to convince her to return and try to find a compromise that worked for everyone. He still didn't realize that it was no compromise for her or most other spellcasters and once you started to use dark magic you opened a door for evil to corrupt your spirit for the rest of your life.

It was just the beginning. Tara knew that Giles, Buffy and even Xander knew of the consequences of dark magic. They had stopped Willow from ending the world when she were consumed by them but they still kept pushing the boundaries. Willow had to endure years of them going "you're our 'Big Gun,' just this once it's okay and then you can stop" when it came to the dark arts. Tara hadn't realized before just how heavy the burden of being the 'Big Gun' really was. How she had to choose between potentially sacrificing friends and allies or sacrificing your spirit and principles for certain.

* * *

  
_Six months ago_

"Tara please don't go. We need you here."

Dawn sat at the end of the single bed and clutched the throw pillow in her arms. Tara was in the process of packing her duffle bag in a cold and methodical manner that the younger girl didn't often see in the usually calm and collected woman.

"Just let me talk to her. Buffy just doesn't understand magic and she didn't mean anything by it!"

Tara slowed down and took a deep breath to calm and center herself.

"Dawnie, she doesn't want to understand. She knows that I won't bend on this but she refuse to stop pushing me towards the dark magic. She's remaining willfully ignorant so she can claim innocence once I start going down the path that Willow did before me."

Dawn was desperate. She didn't want Tara to leave and she hated that once again it was a fight over dark magic and trust that drove her away from Dawn. "But maybe if-"

"No!" Tara hissed raptly and started the younger woman. She caught herself and moved up to sit next to her on the bed, embracing her with one arm.

"I'm sorry Dawnie. It's just.. Neither I or Buffy can bend on this. I owe her my life but not my spirit, not my soul. She promised me I'd get the chance to go and look for Willow and she has reneged on that promise several times. It's been over two years now and I'm stuck in another country all but isolated with no money and no future outside the Slayers due to still being legally dead. I'm going to take what little money I have saved and visit Faith. She's promised me in the past that I could borrow a bit of startup money so I could make a real effort in finding Will."

Dawn nodded but her eyes remained locked on the embroidered pattern on the pillow. "How'll you get there without a passport or identity?"

"The Coven have offered me a one-time teleportation to a location of my choice. In a few hours I'll finally be free to really go out and look for her." Tara's lips formed the crooked smile that had become all too rare during the last year.

"I will never hear from you again, just like with her? This is the last time we'll talk isn't it?"

"Oh Goddess no. Dawnie, I still got my phone and email. Well I'll need to find a computer to use the mail but when I do I'll check it as often as I can. I just want to find her and talk to her. If she doesn't want to see me again then at least I'll know for sure." She tried to sound upbeat but the fear in her voice was almost tactile for her friend.

"How do you even know that she is alive? Other than those standardized mails that Xander receive like clockwork every three months there's been no traces of her at all."

"I just know it, Dawnie. We've had a spiritual connection - one we can literally feel in our souls - since we first met six years ago. Goddess it's been six years already. It feels like both just yesterday but also several lifetimes ago. We used to say that we'll always find each other and I has to believe that's still true."

Dawn had heard it before but something suddenly dawned on her.

"Wait a minute; how did you find each other back then?"

Tara looked at her, nonplussed. "We had our homecauldroned Tinkerbell spell. We could both summon it and it'd seek out the other. Why?"

Dawn just stared at Tara like she was completely dense. "And why are you not using it at this very moment to find her?"

Tara opened her mouth to answer - to give the obvious explanation that was unavoidable - but found she didn't have one. "Uhhm. Well... You see it's for shorter distances. I can't really chase the light over the ocean now can I?"

"No but you can start casting it repeatedly once you get back to Cleveland. Cast it and follow until you can't and then you recast it. Eventually you'll be able to reach her, won't you?"

And that's when the penny finally dropped for the Wicca. She had used all kinds of fancy and powerful spells in the past but always came up short while she forgot the very basic one that the couple had created together. It was almost poetic that it would be the possible solution to a problem she had struggled with ever since her return to life. She climbed to the middle of the bed and sat down indian-style and closed her eyes. After a few seconds a small light appeared and flew out of the opened window.

"She's alive! It works!" The open-mouthed smile may have made her look doped up and completely out of it but it also displayed a hope that Dawn hadn't seen in her since she caught the Wiccan love birds the morning after their short-lived reconciliation four years earlier.

Dawn took out an old laptop from her bag and handed it to Tara with a wide grin. "Here you go. This is Willow's old clunker. Almost everything is password-protected but she left it in the bus the day she disappeared and I just couldn't part with it, it was all I had to remember her by. Please take it and give it to her once you find her, okay?"

Tara crawled up to Dawn and embraced her as the tears freely ran down her cheeks. She finally had a map home. Home was where her heart was.

Home was Willow.


	6. All the Way For You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Seems to matter what I do, so I'm saving this for you  
>  'Cause it seems to be the last piece there is  
> And you haven't had a chance yet to taste this  
> Fragments of a life you shouldn't miss  
> Seems to matter what I say, so I'll hold my tongue at bay  
> And rather use my mouth to kiss your frown away  
> So your doubts no longer darken your day  
> So you can hold your head up high come what may_  
> All the Way / 4U  
> Poets of the Fall

_Two weeks ago_

"Alright I've wired the cash to your account T. It shoulda be enough to keep that old wrecker bait up and running for another two months at least, maybe three. Are you sure you don't need any more green for motels and shit?"

Tara smiled as she relaxed under the night sky. She rested on the worn hood of her old Volvo 240. It was a slow, cheap and ugly car but easy to repair, extremely reliable and with enough space in the trunk to allow her to pack everything she had to her name as she set out on her search.

"No thank you Fay. I'm doing great as it is. I've made the back seat quite comfortable actually and it's not even cold at nighttime anymore. Besides; I'm getting the Tinkerbell dissipation faster each time I try it and I'm pretty sure which city she's living in."

"And I wage you still won't tell me which that city would be?"

"Sorry Fay. I'm already going against her wishes by trying to find her. If she allows me to tell you once I find her, I will do that as soon as possible. But otherwise I'll contact you when I've found her and then we'll see how it goes from there."

"Yeah, I get it." Her frustration was obvious even without the visual signals that the call concealed.

"No you don't Faith. I'm not even telling Xander or Dawn where she is. Not even her parents even though they both believe she died in the crater. Once I find her I'll initiate contact but you know I'm risking both rejection and despair here."

"Hah, likely story. I'm expecting to not hear a word from you in at least a month. You both got four years of wicked screwing to catch up on."

"You know I never kiss and tell."

"Girl, as long as I've known you you've never kissed, period. Take care now and give my best to Red. She might not want to believe it herself but she is missed."

"I'll do that. And Faith? Thank you for all the help, I never would've made it this far without you. I'll see you soon."

"It's chill. And no, we won't. We both know that. You'll be too busy seeing stars."

Tara indulged herself with a hopeful smile as she listened to Faith ending the call. It had taken three years - four if she counted the time she was dead - but she would finally meet her Willow again. She was afraid - _terrified_ even - but she could not rest until she at least knew for a fact where they stood, if there was a chance for a future together.

The search had started hopeful but slow after the Coven had teleported her back to Faith's apartment in Cleveland. At first Buffy - in retaliation of what she perceived to be a personal betrayal to the cause - had tried to block all aid from members of the organization but Faith did as she always did; whatever the hell she wanted. Faith had used some of her discretionary budget to get the Volvo as well as food and spending money for Tara. It was partly out of loyalty to her friend but also out of spite to Buffy.

Okay, it was a lot of spite but she would've helped Tara anyway.

The political backlash of their fallout was unavoidable. Buffy had tried to push her old nemesis around and relations soured between the two factions enough that the Cleveland Slayers started to grow more and more independent of the umbrella group.

At the same time the Devon Coven had all but ended their cooperation with the Slayer Organization. Once Tara left there was no longer anyone who could take her place to smooth over conflicts between the coven and Buffy. After the Coven informed the witches that were still part of the Slayer Organization that they would not give them any training or shelter if they ever dabbled with any dark magic - under orders from the Slayers or otherwise - Buffy was forced to promise that the Slayers would not go down that path in any way as long as she was in charge.

Buffy was also forced to concede several contested issues in order to keep the Cleveland group within the organization. Had just one of the two groups started to break away she would've been able to contain it but the concurrent acts defiance ensured that the leading council's prestige and authority would be shaken for years to come.

Tara had kept herself updated on the events with regular calls to both Dawn and Faith. After Tara left the Slayers Dawn had returned to her studies at Berkeley as her semester started a few days later. She also secretly provided electronic support from her end and employed the skills that Willow had taught her over the years in Sunnydale to help her old foster parents find each other again.

Faith had offered both a Slayer escort as well as the use of local Slayers on Tara's route to provide lodgings but Tara always politely declined the offer. She knew it might've given away her tracks as she was searching for Willow. Not that she expected anyone to want to hurt her but Willow had made many enemies and the friends she still had were likely to try to bring her back to the Good Fight against her will.

Tara did trust Faith to keep her word - that wasn't the issue - but she didn't know the other Slayers in the area and who could be relied upon not to loosen their tongue, unwittingly or not. In short the fewer that knew about her location the better.

But now it was time for her to climb back into the back seat and prepare for what she hoped was the final leg of her search, the last hurdle for her much longed-for reunion.

* * *

  
This was finally it. Tara had observed Willow's home for almost a week. She had been using the driveway of a neighbor - who was out of town if the lack of activity was any indication - as her parking spot where she would observe Willow's comings and goings from a distance. But tonight it was time to finally act - to cross the Rubicon and roll the dice.

She hated doing this - stalking and spying on someone who it should just be so natural to be with - but if her girl were under surveillance of any other groups or under some magical curse that triggered if she got reunited with someone from her former life Tara did not want to risk it.

And yes, she was well aware it was insane troll logic but she had not gotten this far - passing beyond the veil of death and crossed two oceans - just to stumble at the finish line.

She had first gotten fast results to her summoned Tinkerbell when she arrived in Revachol. It was a small seaside suburb outside Boston with a small shipping industry and roughly ten thousand inhabitants. She had done some probes and found no noticeable levels of either magic use or demonic activity - it was nothing but a slumbering american suburb in New England where Willow had chosen to start over.

After sending out three of the magical spirits in a single evening - personally following the last one on foot - she knew for sure that Willow was inside the house in front of her. She had yet to understand just how the extremely talented Wicca had managed to block all the different types of scrying and detection spells she had tried over the years. Even at this short distance Tara was unable to penetrate them with anything. Anything except their customized Tinkerbell spell.

Since then she had been extremely careful and refrained from any further detection spells and was content with observing from a distance using mundane means. She had noticed Willow was out for only a few hours a day and always through a rigid schedule that she never once deviated from.

Willow never left her yard and spent her hours outdoors maintaining her humble but well-kept garden. Tara did not fail to notice the lack of magical herbs that were used in magical spells and concoctions. The only noticeable item that didn't fit with the rest of the milieu was the Salix Nigra - the black willow tree - that provided shade to the front door entrance and formed the centerpiece of the front yard.

Tara had wondered if Willow had chosen the house for the tree or if the tree was of her own creation - a kind of signpost to mark her territory. She never noticed any kind of interest in gardening or herbalism when they took care of Dawn together. In fact; it was Tara who adopted Joyce's old garden and it was a project that Willow showed no interest in at all. But on the other hand it had been four years since they last met. People change.

She knew for a fact that Willow had changed.

Due to her distance she never got the chance to get a clear view of the elfin witch while she worked her 'fields'. She wore large sunglasses and a wide-brimmed sun hat that would have maintain her anonymity to almost everyone. But Tara wasn't everyone, not when it came to the subject of Willow Expertise. She had graduated Willow Studies with a master's degree.

She did however take notice of the complete lack of interactions with anyone else. No phone line was even connected to the house and there was no TV dish on the roof. The windows were never completely covered but there was barely any light from the house - even at night. When Willow was working in the yard the passing neighbors and pedestrians never paid her any attention. Not even casual greetings were exchanged but also Tara never noticed any ill will from them towards Willow or vice versa. It was like Willow had established a reputation to be left alone - to live in peaceful solitude.

Through Tara's sleuthing she had found that Willow kept her given name but had changed her surname to Mactrista - meaning Of the Sorrow - a fact that made Tara very conflicted when she had understood the weight of the name. Willow was a teacher at Revachol High School where she taught computer science, english and math. Other than that she had no real social or digital footprint in local society. No mentions in local media, no photo on the school website and no known affiliation with social events and associations that Tara could identify.

And she was capable to find more where others would find nothing. When Dawn had given her Willow's laptop she had yet again proven her nature as the Key by giving the solution to the puzzle called Finding Willow. After guessing the password on the first try - it was willowtara4ever - Tara suddenly had access to all of Willow's old snooping scripts. It was the stuff she had used to datamine police, morgue, city hall and public records with the application of a few keystrokes in their war against those that go bump in the night.

The scripts weren't as effective as they had been in the past - IT security had made a lot of progress the last couple of years - but they were still useful enough to find almost everything there was to find when it came to the subject of Willow Danielle Mactrista.

It was how she found out that the name change was done through forged documents and therefore never formally approved. It explained Dawn's earlier inability to find the papertrail when she had sought it out in the past. Tara also found Willow's college credits after Sunnydale; that Willow had transferred her credits to Boston U and graduated with just good enough grades to be amongst the best of her peers but not high enough to warrant any special accolades or notice - likely to avoid any scrutiny or mention in any publications. She had then moved to the Boston suburbs immediately after graduation and was hired to begin work only days later and began her new career teaching summer remedial classes.

It wasn't until this very evening that had shiften her Willow's strict routines but when it finally happened it was - if nothing else - a radical detour.

It was a young blonde girl - very likely a minor - who appeared at the front door wearing a good-looking dress as if she were meeting to Willow for a date. Tara would have been lying to herself if the possibilities of the meeting didn't terrify her. When she considered if Willow had fallen enough to start courting students - something that naturally wigged the bejeebers out of her - Tara feared that she had lost her for good to a life she couldn't be part of. It wasn't until she saw Willow's expression as she opened the door that Tara relaxed somewhat. It was obvious that Willow was not expecting the sudden visit and had no idea how to react once she regained her composure.

Well, other than letting the young girl in without actually inviting her that is. Some security measures never really change once they had become second nature.

Willow had told her of how she had invited vampires to her home twice in the past. First her friend Angel and how her goldfishes had paid for it once Angel lost his soul and started hunting down Buffy's friends. The second time was an accidental invite of Spike where only the first appearance of the behavioral modification chip had saved her life. After those two mistakes Willow had become extremely vigilant with how she treated any potential visitors and had drilled both Tara and Dawn on proper invitation security when they lived as a family in the Summers residence.

The teenager had stayed at Willow's place for about an hour before she was collected up by what appeared to be her parents. That was another good sign that nothing illicit was going on behind the her and Willow. Instead Tara felt sick that she had ever doubted the other witch; was she still that fast to lose the trust she had promised herself - and both Faith and Dawn - to grant Willow at their reunion? Tara should've known better; there were some lines that Willow didn't even cross when she was at her worst. She had never been evil - it had been grief and desperation that drove her to hurt Tara and the rest of their friends. It wasn't an excuse for the behaviors, only an explanation to the causes for them, but it was enough for Tara to refuse giving up on their love.

As the car drove away in the darkness with the teenager on board finally Tara rose and paced towards the now-closed front door. Her palms were sweaty and her breath staggered as every step sped up her pulse and the reality of the situation suddenly became unavoidable. The next few minutes would decide. She would know if her old life was nothing but a tumultuous - but also cherished - memory or if she still had a future with her girl.

And Willow was her girl. The only girl for her.

Tara stepped up to the front door and didn't even knock. Instead she opted to open the front door where she saw the back of the woman she had sought and longed after for three eternally long years.

Willow spoke without even turning to face her. "Sandra, did you forget something? I'm okay with you coming here you know, but please knock if you do so."

Tara froze as she suddenly blanked; not knowing what to do or say. In just a couple of seconds her mind raced as it contemplated hundreds of different ways she would start the reunion but eventually she opted to go with the simple and familiar.

"Sweetie?"

Willow froze and Tara felt the tension growing within her former lover - a tension confirmed by the pale face that greeted her as Willow turned around towards the front door.

_"Oh."_


	7. The Sweet Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Lying in the arms of night  
>  In the shadows of the firelight  
> Suspended by this feeling of fading away  
> I wanna run away with you  
> So meet me by the cut through  
> Together we'll make our sweet escape_  
> The Sweet Escape  
> Poets of the Fall

_"Oh."_

Tara first did nothing. She simply didn't know how to respond to Willow. She said nothing while she took in the long sought after appearance of her great love who stared at her in complete silence. Finally Tara nodded towards the inner doormat to query if it was okay if she entered. Willow nodded in response with her mouth agape as if stunned in both awe and horror.

As Tara entered the residence her eyes adjusted to the poor lightning in the house. She wasn't shocked at the sparse furnishing or the multitude of books and tomes covering every single wall. She was more worried at the almost complete lack of personalization that Willow otherwise loved to indulge in. No posters or paintings and no quirky mugs or kitschy lamps. Nothing but the barest essentials for survival. And books. Hundreds - if not thousands - of books.

Willow was dressed in dark yoga pants and a simple tank top. It the same type of sleepwear that she used to wear back when they were a couple in Sunnydale. Her braided hair masked the true length of her red mane but Tara had caught glances of the wavy curls during her observations in the last couple of days. Willow's face was drawn and pale and completely lacked the signs of life - the little microexpressions and twitches that were so quintessentially Willow - that Tara had fallen in love with.

She resembled more the appearance she had during the worst depths of her addiction. Or rather what Dawn had described she had looked like during that time. Tara had avoided her during that entire period for her own sake - letting Willow recover and rebuild her life in peace - a decision she had second-guessed hundreds of times since her return. What if she had just remained and helped Willow recover instead of forcing her to face it all by herself? But would've Willow realize the cost of her spiral into darkness if Tara had stayed with her and what would have prevented her from repeating the actions that drove them apart?  
  
No. Tara knew she had done the right thing back then. It hurt them both but it had to be done - the best choice is very often the easiest or most comfortable one.

Willow eventually realized she was being observed and felt like she was being judged. Her face fell and her shoulders dropped as Willow lowered her head in shame. She quietly shuffled to the indoor garden and retrieved a ceremonial blade - an athame - with ritualistic markers covering the black handle. She held it by the blade as she went to the small table by the back window and retrieved a picture frame as well as a crystal that had been placed next to it. Willow never lifted her eyes from the floor but always felt Tara's eyes as she completed her final duties.

When she returned to Tara - who in confusion had watched the strange proceedings with an eerie silence - the older Wicca suddenly recognized the crystal Willow was holding on to for dear life. It was the Doll's Eye Crystal that Tara had given her when they first got to know each other; the one her grandmother had given her as a child.

In the other hand was the photo that Willow had taken of Tara during their second year together. It had been taken while they were researching Glorificus at the Magic Box not long after Tara's 20th birthday and a cherished memento of the brief period both considered to be the best of their lives.

Willow handed the blade - handle first - to Tara who accepted it on reflex as she didn't comprehend the intention behind Willow's actions. The despairing woman knelt on the floor and held the crystal in one hand and the picture in the other as she pressed both to her chest with closed eyes.

Willow lifted her chin to present her throat in submission. "I accept the punishment of this vengeful spirit with full knowledge of my sins and transgressions. If at all possible please make it quick and make sure it's not one of my students who find me. I don't want to traumatize them with my own sins and failures as they are innocents still."

It took a few more seconds of shocked observance of the teary-eyed woman before Tara came back to her senses.

Willow was not just in a slump or deep depression; she had been completely broken. She only went through the days waiting for her death to claim her and when she saw the form of the woman who had died in her arms she had the - to her very obvious - conclusion that it was her past finally catching up to her. For Willow it was finally the time to deliver the sentence she had been expecting for years.

It wasn't that she gave up when Willow saw what she thought was a vengeful spirit in the form of her dead lover. No, she had given up a long time ago and Tara knew the exact moment when it happened. In essence both of them had died the day Warren went to the Summers residence with a gun in hand and murder in his eyes.

"I will not beg for forgiveness or leniency. I do not regret the death of the murderer of my only light and I will not apologize for it. Just end this torture and send me to whatever hell is expecting me. Don't force me to kneel here and wait for it any longer - I know I have lost."

Tara dropped the athame and covered her mouth with her hands in a futile attempt to conceal the rapidly approaching whimpering that soon overtook her.

* * *

Willow saw nothing as she kept her eyes closed and waited for the end she had expected - longed after - for years. She hadn't considered that whatever vengeful spirit or demon that would eventually claim her life would take the form of Tara but found it a just retribution considering the circumstances.

'Just do it don't force me to wait any more end it and let me face my eternity in hell with some shreds of my remaining dignity. I'm sorry Tara and Dawn and Buffy and Xander and Giles and Kennedy and even Faith. I'm sorry I couldn't be better and I'm sorry for what I forced you to suffer,' her mind raced as she internalized the panic that she tried to hide from her executioner.

She kept her eyes closed and clutched her mementos so close to her chest they were starting to chafe. She heard - but didn't react to - the sound of something metallic hitting the floor and kept her eyes closed. Willow was simply unable to see the spirit look at her with hatred through Tara's loving eyes. She didn't want her last memory of her love to be one of hatred and anger - not even when the alternative was that of her dead eyes staring into nothing as she bled out on their floor.

In the end she couldn't keep it together anymore. The floodgates opened as the tears she had tried to contain poured freely down her face and she failed to stifle the sobs that eventually fled her throat.

"Okay. I'll beg. Please end it. Just kill me. I'll do anything you want if you would just end it all."

She did not receive the death that she was begging for. Instead she was embraced by familiar arms and her crying was echoed by the visitor. They remained kneeling on the floor for over half an hour as Tara embraced her love while they both cried and wailed without any attempt to preserve their dignity.

Willow had refused to relinquish the desperate grip on her prized possessions and kept repeating desperate apologies and pleas for forgiveness while Tara tried to reassure her in turn that she was the real thing - not a simulacrum or demon or ghost. Finally Tara released the embrace and rested on her heels as she sought Willow's eyes.

"Will? Could you please open your eyes for me."

Willow shook her head defiantly; too afraid that the illusion would dissipate if she dared to comply with the request.

"S-sweetie just look at me. I've missed those beautiful emeralds so much. I just want you to see that I'm here and that I'm real and I'm not going anywhere."

Willow remained still for a moment before she slowly opened her eyes. She was willing to risk the danger of crushing despair - one that she would never be able to recover from - for the smidgen of a chance that Tara was telling the truth. As her blurred sight slowly regained its focus she started to realize the form in front of her was real.

The real Tara.

She was dressed in a pair of worn blue jeans and a yellow sleeved top that brought back vivid memories to the younger woman and the many precious memories they had forged together.

Tara saw her counterpart's eyes first get into focus and then growing wide in wonder of what Willow perceived to be the miracle in front of her. She gave the crooked smile that Willow adored above all else - the smile that could form the beacon that lit up the darkest of days - to reassure her that she was the real Tara. Slowly a warm sense of utter bliss grew in Tara's belly as she saw the shy smile that was forming on Willow's lips.

"Tare, I got so lost."

Tara smiled in recognition of the reminder of Willow's greatest show of complete dedication to her - the familiar repetition forming a new oath that none had to speak but both understood.

"I found you Sweetie. I'll always find you."

Willow sobbed with an elated smile on her face as she carefully put her mementos to the side and freed her hands to grasp one of Tara's own. She took her other hand and put it behind Willow's neck as she dared the first kiss between the pair since the day their world fell apart. The night was young and they have a mountain-load of baggage to overcome about but for now - for this very moment - life was just perfect.

Willow was her forever and she knew that she was Willow's.


	8. Moonlight Kissed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _For my words are the salt of lust  
>  On that ivory skin  
> Difficult to hear at all  
> Through the everyday din  
> What is this if not some witchcraft?  
> Wrapped up widdershins  
> To lead us all astray  
> Hook in mouth  
> On through some webs of lies  
> Truth's a distant star  
> In our eyes  
> Moonlight kissed_  
> Moonlight Kissed  
> Poets of the Fall

The couple remained on the floor as they traded both chaste and passionate kisses for another hour before Willow failed to contain the stiff groan she had kept back.

"I'm sorry. Knees are chafing and back is sore." She stretched her neck and a familiar popping sound appeared.

Tara giggled momentarily. "Do you want us to get up?" Willow nodded. "Okay, then we get up."

She stood up and extended her hand in support of Willow as she also got back to her shaky legs and retrieved the picture frame and crystal from the floor.

"Hey Tare? Do you have a place to sleep? Because you can take the recliner. It's what I use for bed. I can find some blankets and make myself a mattress. It's no problem I've slept on the floor many times before!"

Willow gave a shy smile to underline that the offer was genuine and her heart raced as she both feared and expected a rejection of both her and the lodgings.

"Sweetie, it's your beddyish chair. I got a car only two minutes away that I've been living in but if you want I can go collect it and my sleeping bag within. It's more comfortable than the floor - trust me on that. But that's only if you really want." She hid behind her long hair as both of them walked on the conversational eggshells that had formed by the history that had separated them in the past.

"Tara, go get the car. There's space next to the mini and I'll go and make us some tea? You are welcome here as long and little as you would ever want. Mi hovel su hovel and all that jazz!"

Willow's smile grew in both size and confidence and was rewarded with a quick peck before her returned lover hurried out to retrieve her Volvo.

When Tara returned minutes later with her bags in hand she was amazed at how quickly Willow had changed both her own posture but also the general vibe of her home - all without using any magic that Tara could sense lingering in the area. She had quickly prepared tea to both of them - keeping the sole mug for Tara while using her water glass for herself - and made space next to the recliner for her visitor.

The door to the refurbished bedroom was now closed and the previously discarded athame was nowhere to be seen. Tara realized it had probably been returned to where she had earlier taken it in the back room. There it likely served as the ritual implement used for the retrieval of the magical herbs that served as proof of Willow still keeping touch with her spirit despite abandoning the demon-fighting lifestyle.

Willow was still gaunt and worn from years of emotional trauma and solitude but now she radiated with an energy that was nowhere to be seen just hours before. She was still jittery and moved eerily silent as if she snuck around to avoid waking up the ghosts of her past. Once she noticed Tara's return she hurried to lock the door and then held out her hands expectantly.

"May I?" Tara handed over the duffle and sleeping bags with a smile and watched as Willow swiftly deposited the luggage behind the recliner and then rolled out the sleeping bag with an efficiency that almost seemed practiced.

"Wow. This almost seems like routine for you Will, do you often have girls over?"

Willow froze and looked at her with nervous eyes.

"N-no, never. There's no other girls. Well there's Sandra who was just here but she is a only student in the GSA club and wanted to talk now that she doesn't have the support system in school that she is used to. Not that I shut down the club but it's summer and I don't talk with other people outside of work and I forgot to tell you I work at the school and I'm back in high school I mean I work there and my grades didn't crash that badly and I'm running out of breath now so no, no girls."

Willow panted as she managed to finally stop her panicked babble and Tara chided herself as she guiltily loved to see a tiny bit of the neurotic girl she had fallen in love with. She hated how she had gotten Willow to shed the small amount of confidence she had started to regain and discarded her backpack on the floor as she moved up to kiss Willow's head.

"I'm so sorry Sweetie, it was a bad joke. And for the record I did know you were a teacher but I had no idea you were helping the GSA. I'm really proud of you, it's a great thing to do!" She withdrew into herself as she had been unable to stop the words escaping from her mouth. "Not that I really have any right to be proud of you. it's not like I've had anything to do with it." Tara cursed herself as she feared she was being too forward. In her exuberance she had forgotten that Willow accepted her own execution earlier that evening and even though they've reconnected and started what could be a reconciliation it was leaps and bounds before they'd be anything close to healed.

Then it was Willow's turn to offer comfort. "Baby? It's all due to you. You taught me the importance of acceptance - of a safe space - and everything good I've done ever since has been because of what you have taught me. I know I have lied and failed you so many times but know that I am yours if you want me, before and always."

Tara hugged her again and held back the tears she thought she had already exhausted. They soon disengaged and Tara went to the bathroom to change into her sleepwear while Willow finished setting up for a long night of catching up after years of mutual longing. When Tara returned from the bathroom she shuffled down into the sleeping bag and sat up to drink the tea that Willow had made for her. They enjoyed the relaxing tea in silence and Tara smiled as she realized that Willow still remembered exactly how much milk she wanted in the drink.

It was Willow that broke the comfortable silence when she put her empty glass on the table. "How did you come back? I mean, I'm overwhelmed with joy and over the moon and back that you are alive but Osiris said it couldn't be done. Because I tried. Oh Goddess I tried and you have no idea how much I hated my failures when I tried and couldn't save you."

Tara put a hand on Willow's knee to calm her down. "I know. Dawn and the others have told me and I don't fault you for not succeeding. It was almost impossible but I'm glad you tried. I didn't want to die."

"So it's not a Suicidal Buffster situation?" Willow had considered the possibility of Tara being forced to endure the same torment that Buffy had when they resurrected her.

"No, nothing like that. I wanted to come back. I wanted to live and I wanted to see you again. I wasn't finished here." Willow smiled sadly. "But it was actually Buffy who saved me. The Powers That Be gave her a wish after you all closed the Hellmouth and she asked for my return. Cordelia says 'hi,' by the way!"

Willow grew pale as she realized just when and how it had occurred. "Oh Goddess. Oh no. Please tell me she didn't bring you back for me, I don't want you here if it's a wish forcing you be here. I can't do that to you. Not again. I can't force you to stay with me. I'm sorry." She hugged her knees as she curled into a ball as she feared the revelation that her biggest dream had become a monkey-pawed nightmare.

"No Sweetie. I came back for me and I - according to Buffy as I have no memories at all of the Summerlands - told her as much before I accepted the offer to come back. I mean I still want you and only you but it is of my free will. It has always been of my own free will that I've come to you."

Willow calmed down gradually and peeked out of the cover of her folded limbs. "So... no lingering heavenness or compulsions? Goddess Buffy must hate me for fleeing as a coward just as she did this for you. She could have wished for anything, wished for _anyone_ , and I repay her fulfilling my biggest wish with abandoning her as a craven poopyhead."

Tara's eyes nervously shifted in avoidance between the closest bookshelf and Willow. "Wellllll, that's not actually completely true. There was apparently some limitations on the wish and she once told me - actually she shouted it at me during an angry argument - that I was her fourth choice. The three ahead of me just couldn't or wouldn't accept for different reasons."

That was something Willow wouldn't have estimated. "Only fourth? Okay I can see Joyce. Aaand maybe Spike as she always saw something in him that the rest of us didn't. But who else and why didn't any of them accept?"

"Spike's soul was trapped in an amulet at the time. He's back now though for what it's worth. Joyce refused to return as she wanted to enjoy her afterlife instead. It was Anya who was third but she," Tara sighed sadly before continuing, "she is held captive by D'Hoffryn due to her history as a vengeance demon. The Powers couldn't bring her back even if she wanted to."

"Oh heck. Poor Anya. I mean we almost never got along but I don't think she's in a good place if she's with D'Hoffryn. He wasn't exactly happy with her the second time she became a human. How did Xander take that bit of info?"

"Not well. He took a sabbatical for a couple of months and lived with _Dracula_ of all people. Or all vampires. I guess. He's better now though! He got a long-distance relationship with Dawn as she's completing her studies actually. She says hi and misses you, by the way." She smiled at Willow who stared into the distance as she was processing the updates on her old family.

"Wait! Dawnie knows you're here? Who else knows? I love them all but I don't want them to come and try to bring me back. I can't go back again." She nervously stared out of the window as if she would see a team of Slayers waiting in the darkness to drag her back against her will.

"Only Faith and Dawn know that I have found you but they only know that you're still in the US. They don't know the city or even the state: I've kept my search and locations hidden because I didn't even know if you wanted me here at all." She hid behind her hair again with the implication of the statement obvious to them both.

"Tara? Listen to me. If I had thought there was even a thousand of a percentile of a chance that you were alive I would have spent day and night trying to find you. I guess you have told Xander to tell me by email?" Tara nodded. "My promise in the updates were kept as I've never opened any replies and they're automatically deleted when I receive them. I knew that if I read them I'd be tempted into trying to help and I just can't do that anymore. I appreciate that you've kept my secret. I am happy - if a bit surprised - that they were invested in this but I can't talk to them yet. I don't know if I can ever meet them again."

Tara nodded. "That's okay. I'm happy to know that you wanted to meet me again despite everything."

"Please trust me when I say that being rash when Buffy disappeared would have been considered the biggest mistake of my life. Okay it would be if I didn't have so many other good candidates to pick from." She chuckled nervously. "You know. Getting addicted and violating you. Or abandoning you at the fair. Or causing your death. Or trying to kill Buffy, Giles and Dawn. Or trying to end the world. Or awakening all the Slayers. Or almost killing Dawn that other time. Or-"

"Or flaying a man alive?" Tara interrupted with an expressionless face as she probed Willow for her stance on a subject they would have to confront eventually.

" _No!_ " Willow sat up with her back straight. This subject was the one thing she did not regret. "I will not ever apologize for that. I never have. He murdered you and would have killed Buffy as well if I hadn't overdosed. He deserved everything he got and more and if being given a chance to change history I would only choose to do it without dark magic. But trust me when I say I'd end him every single time." Her famous resolve face hid the anxiety she held that Tara would never forgive her for both the murder but also the complete lack of remorse of it.

"Good." Willow did not anticipate that response. "He was a murdering rapist and Dawn told me that he tried to kill you several times during that day. I'm glad he is gone and unable to hurt anyone else again."

Willow looked at Tara as if she had turned green and grown horns.

"Willow; listen to me. I know you and the others had the idea that I was some kind of good and pure paragon. I'm not. I'm human. I curse, I stumble and I mess up. I can forgive many things - including everything you've ever done - but I can't forgive him for killing me and trying to kill you and Buffy. I'm not a saint, I'm only human. It was you who taught me that I was nothing more than human."

Willow giggled in remembrance of Spike punching Tara's nose and hurting himself in the process before she returned to her somber self.

"I do regret hunting Jonathan and that other one though. They were little shits but I shouldn't have tried to kill them for Warren's actions."

"No you're right; you shouldn't have. But they survived and Andrew seems to have found his way, _finally_." Tara made no effort to hide her frustration with the diminutive geek.

Willow nodded understandably. "Yeah. I never could accept how easily he was accepted with the others. Even if he didn't pull the trigger himself he was part of many efforts to hurt us and Buffy in particular. He also murdered Jonathan. Oh and let's not forget that when I temporarily turned into Warren," Tara's poorly hidden surprise revealed her ignorance of those events, "he was overjoyed of Warren's apparent return like I've never seen him before or since. That he was allowed to stay in the house after that - the house where his best friend and accomplice murdered you - was an insult to both you and me."

Tara nodded somberly. She knew some of Andrew's history with her murderer and how she had never felt safe when he was around - she never had those six months where they got acclimated to him. "He's a Watcher now you know? He's in charge of the entire southern European division based out of Rome."

Willow groaned in frustration and was both shocked and completely unsurprised that they had given him so much power and influence. "Buffy's brainchild?"

"Giles' actually. Buffy is the real head of the Slayers but Giles is like the head Watcher and in charge of Andrew's training. Xander is a watcher now too. Dawn is outside the organization and enjoying the college life while Faith run the Cleveland group. She is the one who loaned me the funds for the search, actually."

Willow's eyebrows shot into orbit. "Wait, really? Give me her account number and how much, I'll cover every penny of it."

"There's no need to Will, I'll do it eventually. She know it'll take a while to get it back but I will." Tara yawned as the fatigue of the day was catching up to her.

"Please Tare, let me do this. It's my fault you had to do it in the first place and I have almost no expenses and a decent salary. Well for a teacher anyway. I got a lot of money for a rainy day and those clouds out there are sure looking shifty." In an exaggerated manner Willow gazed out at the clouds hidden in the darkness. "Please? I mean, it's the least I can do and don't take this the wrong way but if you're living in a car on borrowed money then you need it a lot more than I ever could. There's no strings attached as I won't miss the money any way so you won't be in my debt in any way at all."

Tara considered protesting but soon relented with a smiling nod that was interrupted by another even bigger yawn.

Willow beamed and shuffled to the side in the recliner as she lifted the covers. "If you want there's space here for cuddling. Only if you want and no pressure and no funny business but it's a lot more comfortable than the floor, sleeping bag or no sleeping bag."

Tara gave her a crooked smile and started moving to relocate but stopped mid-motion.

"Are you certain? Because I'd love to snuggle tonight but only if you really want. You're already being the bestest of best host by letting me sleep here."

Willow didn't answer but gestured empathetically for Tara to join her under the covers. Tara quickly got comfortable in the now quite crowded recliner as she knew not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"So you don't have any money or a place to live? Where have you been the last three years then?"

Tara shrugged nonchalantly. "Just with the Slayers. I was their resident Wicca and magic advisor until we had some... irreconcilable differences but it was a room and board deal only, as there's no budget for any salaries. And with being legally dead and all it's not like I have any records to apply for an apartment or a job. Any money I had left when I died was inherited by dad and Donny so that's gone too."

Willow frowned and mourned the years Tara had lost - both the real and academical.

"If I still had my laptop there is something I could do about that."

Tara grinned as she whispered an incantation and her backpack hovered to the girls. She withdrew Willow's old mac and returned the long-forgotten but previously constant companion to its first owner.

"Dawn had kept it and wanted me to return it to you. I actually had use of some of your old data-mining setups when trying to find you, _Willow Mactrista_. It's all charged up and ready to go!"

Willow kissed her cheek and grinned as she booted up her old friend. She connected to her Wi-Fi and then brought up a hidden file called 'Dreamlands' but refrained from starting the application; her index finger hovering above the touchpad.

"If you really want I can bring you - all of you - back to life with the press of a button."

Tara leaned forward to read the screen. "Dreamlands? I haven't seen that file before, what's it for?"

"It was what I dreamt of every day after I returned from England. I hoped every day - _every second_ \- that you would return to me one day so I wrote a script to modify all your records by using hidden and dormant backdoors in all the relevant systems. When I run this you'll be back alive. You'll also get immediate access to a hidden bank account I set up where I had, uuhm, _appropriated_ some money from the old Watcher's Council to start over. Your college records will be valid again and it'll be as if your death was nothing but a clerical error."

Tara fought back the tears as she burrowed her face in the nape of Willow's neck. "You did all that even though the chance of me coming back was all but nonexistent?"

"I had to in order to survive. I was dying every day and needed to preserve a smidgen of an echo of the shadow of a hope to make it through every single day. The only thing I couldn't account for was your tombstone. I refused to do any damage to it in any way but that's no longer an issue these days with the city buried under millions of gallons of the Pacific Ocean." She spoke as if she was explaining her morning routines or the recipe of white bread; as if the application was something completely natural for a grieving computer whiz with magical inclinations.

"I just need to put in a new place of residence and your word and Tara Maclay will once again legally join the world of the living. Oh and there's no backdated taxes either. It'll forge those records too because that would just be a nasty surprise for no good reason." She smiled as she still hovered her finger over the mousepad while awaiting the confirmation or denial from the judicial zombie next to her.

"Do it! BUT only on one condition!" Willow turned to her as she waited for the demands. "If you are okay with becoming a landlord I'd love to become your tenant, _miss Mactrista_."

Willow beamed and she performed an elaborate happy dance in her head while she entered the address and activated the script. A series of windows opened up and displayed what was to Tara completely incomprehensible lines of code and after a minute they all shut down and were replaced with a single window - a picture of the two of them dancing in the air in the Bronze.

"Welcome to your new home, miss Maclay. My rules are: No smoking, no vampires and no chosen ones. I hope you'll be staying here for a long time because we'll need to get some new furniture to make you comfortable. And if there's one thing I can guarantee it's complete Tara Comfortableness."


	9. Lift/Kamikaze Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Like the other day  
>  I thought you won't be coming back  
> I came to realize my lackluster dreams  
> And among the schemes  
> And all the tricks we try to play  
> Only dreams will hold their sway and defy_  
> Lift  
> Poets of the Fall
> 
>  _The way you walked in  
>  I would kiss the earth beneath your feet  
> Take me where the angels fall  
> You take it all  
> Here give no quarter for my love  
> You raise me up to tear me down  
> Leaves you reelin', feels like stealin'  
> Frantic moments of kamikaze love_  
> Kamikaze Love  
> Poets of the Fall

The morning that followed their reunion was one of the most tumultuous - but also one of the most exciting - in Willow's life.

She woke as usual at seven in the morning - just as she had done ever since she moved to the suburbs following her college graduation - but instead of rigorously following her set routines she felt the warm body of her light behind herself and turned around to embrace the sleeping woman.

She watched Tara with a side splitting grin and almost shook in utter contentment. She had woken up a couple of times during the night - both due discomfort in the crowded furniture and due to returning fears that the day before had been but a cruel and wonderful dream - but was still more relaxed than she had been in years. Normally she wouldn't have shaken her routines for almost anything except a complete collapse of civilization but that day? That day she felt completely fine with fudging the numbers as much as she would ever want to.

She had realized the importance of the routines during the first break at Boston U. As soon as she weren't forced to follow the set schedule of her course plan her entire world had collapsed and she suddenly spent all her waking hours crying in her dorm with the only bright spot being her luck in getting a single room instead of a double. She lost both weight and health during that first break and ever since then she had set plans for all her previously unscheduled time.

It meant that any hypothetical social events was an early casualty but her fellow students had started avoiding her soon after her admittance anyway. She was an excellent student - always completing her coursework quickly and diligently - but she never spoke unless first being addressed and outside of class she was even more monosyllabic than Oz had ever been. The few students who had tried engaging with her soon grew dispirited and eventually it became common knowledge that the small and red-haired Mactrista girl - the girl who always sported a sad expression of grief and regret - was to be left alone unless absolutely necessary.

One cocky frat boy had thought she would be an easy lay - that she was nothing but a shy wallflower - and that any type of interaction of the amorous kind would be both appreciated and returned. When his overly frisky hand ended up with five broken bones and a fractured thumb there was no further attempts from him - or anyone else - to touch or court her.

The boy in question never reported her to the school or police as he feared social suicide if it turned up on record that he had been humiliated by a girl that was barely half his size and who often appeared like she would fall over by a strong gust of wind. Instead she eventually developed a reputation that reminded some students of the type that solitary individuals in small towns often attracted; one of a hidden murderer or a psychopath just waiting to go off the reservation at the slightest provocation.

They had no idea how close to the truth that had been. That she had almost ended them all not that many months in the past.

Willow did however appreciate the fringe benefit of her closest dorm neighbors being extra careful not to break the noise pollution rules or to speak too loudly in the corridor outside her room. Not that she told anyone of that. That'd require interacting with people. Fear was the only means of communication she needed.

The fearsome reputation didn't follow her when she started working in Revachol. Plenty of rumors surrounded the cute woman who had appeared out of nowhere and who nobody knew but once she became the faculty sponsor of the Gay-Straight Alliance Club at Revachol High the rumors were supplanted by another type. When she eventually confirmed her homosexuality - following repeated intrusive accusations from a conservative parent - and refused to back down or stay silent on issues relevant to the GSA she was left alone by the majority of the locals and many of the students. The few that knew her well(relatively speaking) - the members of the GSA - did get occasional peaks behind the protective curtain she had surrounded her private life with but other than Sandra's visit the day before she never gave anything but the most basic answers to any probing into her personal life.

Even Sandra - she who had been told the most private secrets Willow felt she would ever be willing to share just twelve hours earlier - was now hopelessly outdated with the info on her teacher she had accumulated. The small but very game-changing fact that Willow's dead The One had recovered from that usually very terminal condition was the most obvious example.

Willow remained in the recliner for another thirty minutes - her arm wrapped around the waist of her returned lover - silently appreciating the facial features that she would often describe as nothing short of angelic. To further support her description Tara's hair had been spread out in a manner that made it appear like a halo of more mundane origin. It wasn't until the subject of her desire started to stir that she was torn from her devotion.

"Mmmhm. Just how long are you going to lay there and sneak a peek on your tenant?"

Willow grinned as she was reminded how Tara were so good at faking sleep in the morning without Willow ever noticing it.

"Oh I don't know, the rent needs to be paid somehow and I think this was a rather harmless way to collect it." She leaned in and kissed Tara on the top of her head. "Did you sleep well?"

"Much better than I have done in a very long time. Okay, maybe it wasn't the most ergonomic bed but by far the most comfortable and relaxing." She sat up and stretched her back. "I do have one request though but only if you're still willing to let me move in on a more foreverishy basis."

Willow's morning got even brighter as she watched as Tara started her own morning routines. "Baby, you can live here until the end of days if you so wish. And you can request anything you want, Tare. Well, almost anything. I'm still not going back to hero business and I'm not putting in a frog aquarium or starting to host any social events for the neighborhood."

The musical sound of Tara's laugh was another reminder of a life Willow had lost but now had one more chance to regain. A life where she would spend every single day trying to provoke the sound that filled her soul with joy and happiness.

"Nothing that bad. I just wonder if we can get a bed and maybe an extra set of plates and utensils. And - but only if we're really daring and adventurous - some food that isn't just pasta rings drenched in tomato sauce?"

Willow blushed as the thought that Tara would like to actually make the house liveable on a long-term basis hadn't crossed her mind. No matter how many times Tara would affirm her decision in staying put, and how much Willow really trusted her, there would always be the lingering doubt in the back of her head that it was just a dream; that nothing she did would ever make her deserve to live with the woman of her dreams.

"Sure. My mini isn't that good with furniture though so we're gonna have to use your car for that."

Tara nodded eagerly and started to scan the area; clearly searching for something in particular. "Hey where's your stereo?"

Willow shifted in the recliner. "I don't have one."

"Okay then. Any CDs we can put into the laptop? I would love a morning soundtrack while I got ready and cleaned up my now obviously obsolete bedroll."

Willow looked down at her hands and mumbled a reply.

"Come again sweetie?" Tara turned to her with gentle eyes and stopped searching.

"I don't listen to music anymore." Her eyes didn't shift target.

"Never? You used to listen to music when doing, well, everything!"

"All songs - all music - only reminded me of the one song I would never hear again. The one song I didn't - that I couldn't - record and was lost forever due to my own stupidity. I tried listening to other kinds of music but my mind always eventually regressed to that day in the park. To that song on the bridge. So I had to stop."

Tara's heart ached as she again was reminded of the crippling agony that Willow had experienced and how she was unable to let herself recover from what she felt was the suffering she was due. Eventually Willow looked back up at her.

"And then there was silence."

* * *

It wasn't until late afternoon that they had managed to purchase some furniture for the remodel. After much awwing and humming back and forth between them - neither of them daring to overstep any imagined boundaries - Tara finally put her foot down and asked directly if Willow wanted to share a bed or if she was going to stay in the recliner. She also made it very clear that Willow was extremely welcome in her bed if she desired to but that they needed to know that day so they wouldn't buy a single that both were going to use anyway.

Willow - upon being confronted into making her will known - finally answered clearly that yes; she would enjoy sharing a bed with Tara. Very much so actually. Willow being Willow she still couldn't refuse to jest that it made her seem kind of creepy by being such a pervy landlord.

With the pair living together as a couple it meant some of the invisible walls no longer hindered their communication and shopping plans. They suddenly became much more efficient and bought another recliner for Tara - it similar to the old one that Willow refused to throw out - and enough plates and other kitchen utensils to actually have spares.

Sheets, towels and other household items soon followed and after some prodding Willow even accepted the purchase of a 5th generation iPod with an economical speaker setup. She wasn't that opposed really since her main reason for her avoidance of any and all types of music had evaporated the moment Tara stepped through her front door.

And she would never force Tara to give up music like Willow had. She had always been a creative soul and had displayed her talent with painting and handcrafted nicknacks early on in their relationship. She never used to sing in front of people - not even in front of Willow. The crippling shyness had never really completely vanished in that area until the last hurdle had been removed the day Sweet was summoned to Sunnydale.

Other than the wonderful ballad in the park Willow hadn't experienced it herself. Tara had left her soon after Sweet's disappearance and Willow never got the chance to hear her sing again before she had been murdered. Willow would not try to delude herself into denying that she really was looking forward to getting another chance some wonderful day in the future. She just hoped that Tara had not curtailed her creative spark while living in Scotland but if she knew her as well as she did that was completely out of the question.

They were now at the last stop of the day. It was Willow's regular place of purchase that they used to refill their food storage. The other regulars in the local shop were not only confused when the notoriously introverted teacher completely changed the contents of her shopping cart. Instead of her spaghettios, tea and Jack Daniels she now bought basic ingredients. Fruits, vegetables, juices and other foodstuffs that required actually cooking something instead of using nothing but a microwave.

What really made the local townies take heed was Willow's unexpected and rather sudden change of persona. She was still a girl of very few words when others were around but she was not only with a woman that was a complete unknown to the other regulars but obviously one who was very close to Willow. The couple giggled as the other woman joked about her usual eating habits and generally acted like teenagers in the spring by sending small smiles that they thought were kept hidden from the others but were as if broadcasted from miles away as far as the bystanders knew. Had Willow not been so distracted she would have realized the spectators who were likely taking notice of as much as they could to feed the otherwise undersupplied rumor mills - the summer had sent many of the locals on vacations once the schools ended - of the suburbs.

It was while Tara was comparing two local brands of butter - not recognizing either of them as she hadn't seen them in Oregon, Ohio or California - that Willow suddenly changed the subject. Their friends in the past were usually caught unaware when Willow did one of the apparently random subject changes but Tara had learned to catch the early warning signs and had quickly reacclimated herself after four and a half years of being out of practice.

"Just how did you manage to find me?" She whispered - knowing the subject was far too delicate for the small suburb - and suddenly felt very aware of the not-so-discrete spectators.

"I told you before; I'll always find you." Tara answered with a teasing mirth.

Willow embraced her from behind - ignoring the intrusive stares from the other customers - and put her chin on Tara's shoulder. "Yeah but how? I mean I had enchanted the Doll's Eye Crystal with a charm that blocked all kinds of detections that I could find. And just trust me when I say that I can find a lot of them. And I know for a fact that my datamining scripts would not be enough for a global search. What exactly did I manage to overlook?"

"Me, obviously." She rested her head on Willow's. "I would've thought you had noticed the Tinkerbells that I summoned out at stable intervals. I simply sat by my car and summoned one; following it until it outpaced me and eventually dissipated. Repeat until I found a gorgeous hacker with a very rigid schedule and poor eating habits."

Willow wondered how she could've missed both the spell itself and the Tinkerbells. 'She's right Willow,' she thought to herself. 'You'd think that you'd see those glowing little balls. I mean they're pretty goal-oriented and noticeable. Especially in the nighttime where they'd look like-'

"It was YOUR knockers I saw those nights," she exclaimed.

The store went quiet as Willow realized she had almost shouted the conclusion and her face started the process of turning into the same color as her wavy curls while she tried to find a high shelf she could hide behind in embarrassment.

"Sweetie? I happen to know very well you have always been a fan of my 'knockers' but I don't think the entire store needs to know." She grinned as she turned to give Willow a quick peck on the cheek before they had to disentangle themselves from each other. Willow had already spawned enough rumors for the day.

"Har-de-har. The 'knockers' were the fireflies that kept tapping my windows until they died. Or so I thought. I don't know if you noticed yesterday but my backyard is filled with fireflies during the summer nights and they provided some pretty good camouflage for the little sneaky Tinkerbells." Willow appeared as if she was vigorously studying a packet of margarine on the shelf as she was considering the reason the spell managed to pierce her protections.

"What did you actually use to block the usual spells I tried at first, my little Will-o-witch?"

"Well I created my own spell, naturally." Tara had in the past been worried about the casual tone Willow had when it came to customizing the spells she often used even though some were older than any still existing civilization. Tara had learned a lot since then - of Willow's due diligence in the year Tara spent in the Summerlands - from the Devon Coven who had informed her that the uncompromisingly conservative ideas about the spells she and many others held prevented any development of the black arts and was seeing the process with new and more open-minded eyes.

Willow had become a lot more careful too and had abandoned the casual and sometimes disrespectful stance on magic that she used to entertain. That was the biggest reason for Tara's acceptance to the process that used to keep her up at night in the past. "What did the spell actually entail," she asked while being very careful to not put in any trace of judgement or worry in the question.

Willow shrugged as she didn't follow Tara's train of thought. "I just blocked any scrying, detecting and tracking spells practiced by any living mystic or written in any book. It's one I created about a month before Sunnydale went bye-bye in case we had to flee and had to hide from the First Evil."

"And when I was dead just who actually practiced the Tinkerbell spell that you and I had customized." Tara glanced pointedly at her with a knowing smirk as Willow caught up with her and smiled shyly.

"I guess I shoulda known that my own subconscious would never allow me to completely close all doors for you to find me. You really know me better than I do." Willow happily skipped to their cart and began to do a mental inventory to see if they were missing anything they'd need.

"Actually the Tinkerbell was Dawn's idea, not mine. I had tried every other spell under this sun - and some suns found only in other dimensions - but had gotten nowhere. It was with her fresh eyes on the problem that we made a breakthrough and after that it was just time to get in the grind on the ground floor." She finally deposited one of the butter packs into the cart as they moved towards the checkout line.

"Boy am I glad that Dawnie have no reason to hunt me down for revenge these days. That kid is scarily efficient when she wants to. Did she tell anyone else of the solve?" Willow leaned forward over the handle of the cart as they waited for the customer ahead of them to finish unloading their basket.

As soon as the customer was finished Tara moved them up to the cashier and started unloading their wares. "No but would it even matter at this point? The Tinkerbell is made for us only. Also when I left Buffy lost almost all her real magical support and resources - other than Giles and Andrew obviously - so the Slayers won't find us that way unless you ever let them."

Willow grinned contently with being repeatedly outsmarted by her girlfriend. It was a humbling experience; one she had missed more than she had even realized.


	10. Where Do We Draw the Line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _What does tomorrow want with me  
>  What does it matter what I see  
> If it can't be my design  
> Tell me where do we draw the line_  
> Where Do We Draw the Line  
> Poets of the Fall

When the pizza finally arrived it had not only already become dark outside their window but it was already approaching midnight. Willow and Tara had come home and unloaded the car while they were waiting for the furniture store truck to deliver the bed and dresser they had ordered. That the truck had been delayed didn't bother them as they had realized early on that they needed to re-furnish the living room to make space for the bed and recliner. They decided to completely remove the mostly unused dining table and put the bed in the middle of the room - keeping the bedroom as a herbalist's garden for the foreseeable future - and put the second recliner opposite to the first one to provide both chairs with a good view of the backyard.

Tara didn't know if Willow realized that she was running them both ragged with practical matters on purpose for the first couple of days. She had weighted the different approaches she could have to their reunion for months. Her first idea would be to go the same route she had just before her death; to simply skip the important processes that were necessary for a healthy and lasting relationship. She was glad she had done so in the past but knew that this Willow couldn't ignore the past - she couldn't skip the healing process that they both required.

None of them were healthy but they were healing. They were facing the hard subjects head-on and for once they were both in a state of mind where they could approach their issues with mostly rational minds at the forefront. There would be no going back to normal because they hadn't really experienced anything resembling normality. Instead, they'd forge a new normal together; they'd both be clear from the start what they wanted and expected out of a life together. It was more of a clinical approach than before but after the completely emotionally driven lives they both had lived in Sunnydale they needed some practical distance so they'd be able to avoid - or at least handle - the pitfalls that had caught them in the past.

So Tara had claimed the responsibility of setting up the stereo system early on and Willow encouraged her to provide the soundtrack for the start of their second lives together. For Tara it was a very literal second life but for Willow it was much more metaphorical. She knew she had failed in her goals to set out and start living - not just surviving - when she left her past behind in Sunnydale but with the reappearance of she who Willow longed for above anyone else - _anything else_ \- she had found a new lease on life.

Willow knew it wasn't fair to Tara to shoulder the mental well-being of Willow on top of everything else but the elfin woman couldn't help it. As much as she tried to convince herself that she could live a full life without Tara by her side she had long ago realized it was folly - a lie that she told her old friends to prevent some of the always-sympathetic grimaces they had constantly thrown at her when she first had returned from England. If Tara no longer wanted Willow she would let her go - even though it would be the end of the last shreds of her remaining hope - to live the life she wanted. She would find a peace of sorts in the fact that Tara would at least get the chance of a full life that Warren had taken from her.

What Willow hadn't realized - or rather; she hadn't accepted it - was that their relationship was very co-dependent. It wasn't always healthy with Willow's almost crippling autophobia and complete lack of self-worth being obvious symptoms but it was what both women wanted. As much as Willow needed Tara - Tara also needed Willow. It wasn't out of an imagined debt for Willow's role in saving her from both Tara's family or Glory's braining that Tara stayed with her. Tara really did love and need Willow for her own personal foibles and insecurities. For good and bad.

They took a pizza break and Tara internally praised Willow's decision to assemble the recliner first thus allowing them both to eat their supper in the comfort the chairs provided. She watched Willow's reactions to the first bite of comfort food in what could have been years and beamed as she saw the almost euphoric dance of reactions in the eyes of her lover as the taste buds responded to the long-forgotten friend. Willow gulped down her share of the food in almost record-time and went to collect a pair of whiskey tumblers and the opened bottle of Jack. Tara shook her head - she had never gotten the taste of spirits - and Willow returned the empty glass to the cupboard after pouring two fingers of whiskey for herself.

She watched Tara continue her supper in a much more restrained manner as she leaned into her chair with the glass in hand.

"Baby?" Tara looked up from the food in silent acknowledgement. "Just so there's no misunderstandings in the future I need to ask you some things that I really don't want to ask. And to be honest I fear you don't want either but we both need to talk about it." Tara paused and furrowed her brow in anticipation of what Willow would reveal. "You do know about me and the Slayer named Kennedy, don't you?"

Tara nodded. "Yes. I know you were a... thing. I am also fine with it. Okay, I'm not going to lie and claim that it doesn't still make me kinda jealous that she could be there when I couldn't but let's face it; I was dead. I would never expect of you to remain celibate in my memory for the rest of your life, that isn't healthy for either of us."

Willow smiled without any joy reached her eyes as she refrained from explaining to Tara that she had planned to do just that when she moved to Boston and then Revachol. "Do you know if she's okay? I mean; I in no way want to reconnect with her but I was unfair to her from the start. She wanted something more than I could provide - she was comfort for me but she saw me as future partner material - and I was an ass when I left her with only a 'thanks and goodbye forever' but I never really wanted to hurt her."

Tara offered a reassuring smile. "She's doing just fine, Will. She is in charge of security at the Slayer Organization and is part of the leading group. I mean she IS an ass and we never got along but she's doing okay. She is still quite angry at you - and that is quite understandable considering the circumstances - but she loved to take that out on me instead and gave me no end of grief during our interactions in and outside the meetings."

Willow groaned as she tried to picture what kind of feminine dickwaving the Slayer would employ to stake 'her' claim and superiority. "Sorry about that. She is nice most of the time. Or rather; she was to me. Ken is just a spoiled brat with no knowledge or interest in magic except for what damage we can do with it."

"No kidding? I tried to explain the danger and consequences of dark magic to her so many times with no progress at all. It was a very frustrating round of deja vú to be honest." She realized as the words left her mouth how spiteful they sounded and saw the hurt in Willow's eyes and knew that the words were taken as a jab at Willow's own history of abuse and addiction. "Sweetie I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way. I know you're doing better and I trust you with my life, heart and soul."

Willow couldn't summon the strength to look her in the eyes - her gaze being firmly locked in place at the usual firefly kegger on the other side of the window - as she meekly nodded a silent response. An uncomfortable silence filled the air as neither knew what to say that wouldn't just tear up old and better forgotten wounds. Eventually it was Tara who decided she had to do something to avoid their relationship falling into the same traps yet again.

"Willow? I need to know. I'm not mad or disappointed anymore but we must talk about this. Why did you chose the magic over me?"

* * *

It would be fair to say that neither of the two witches wanted to have the conversation that was now unavoidable. Willow was not one who particularly enjoyed speaking about that time of her life and the shame of her actions had not been mitigated over the years. At the same time Tara also feared what she'd learn as to her it often felt that simple; that Willow had simply loved power more than she had loved her. It was a fear that remained even after Tara had been informed by the Devon Coven of the corrupting influence of the Hellmouth on untrained spellcasters.

Willow was quiet for a long time - she used as much willpower as she could muster to not break into tears when recalling the mindset she was in at the time and didn't want to evoke sympathy when she felt completely undeserving of it - but finally she managed to summon the strength to lift her gaze and peer into Tara's waiting blue eyes.

"Because the only person who ever supported my witchcraft stopped doing so and instead made me ashamed for who and what I was. When she reminded me how much I hate myself I tried to grasp on to the only thing left that made me feel anything but less than worthless."

Tara didn't expect that answer; that was obvious to Willow even in her shaken state of mind. "How did I do that? I never-"

"When you stopped trusting me. You stopped believing I was completely on board the Tara train. And I mean I can understand that in a way even if it was completely incorrect. I had a history of infidelity in my only relationship and that's not something one should or could easily dismiss." Willow had already lost any and all control of her tears but let them flow freely as she focused on wording her explanations as clearly as she could.

"But then you also told me that I frightened you," she continued. "It made me feel like a monster - that I had completely misunderstood our relationship - and that what once made me even a little bit interesting to you was now what made you feel unsafe around me. So I panicked. I stormed out like a child instead of letting you explain and then I stayed away because I was too afraid that the next time you saw me you'd end it."

"That wasn't what I meant! Not at all. I just-"

" _I know_. I think I knew it back then too in a way but all my mind would show me was a 'Best of... Twenty Years of Abandoned Willow 81 to 01'-clip show. In my twisted mind I had already been dumped and all my friends would side with you in the split and their repeated skepticism and doubt of my witchcraft had made their allegiances clear in that feud. Once again: I wasn't in a good place and it wasn't fair of me to blame you. I don't anymore and I haven't for a very long time."

She finished the liquor and put the tumbler on the table.

"And then you got brained by Glory. All I saw was your future being taken as punishment for my lack of trust in you and that my doubt left you alone on that bench. So I went to ensure that Glory paid for her cruelty. And she _did_. However in the process I used some dark magic that was worse than you've ever seen from me before or since. I lost the fight and Buffy saved me but that was the first time Glory had been hurt at all; the first time we had a weapon that worked. That's when Buffy made me her _Big Gun,_ " she said the words with such venom that it was almost tactile.

"She saw that the dark magic worked and to be honest; so did I. Suddenly I was the only way for her to win. I used dark magic to keep a literal army of religious zealots away, I used dark magic to bring Buffy back from her catatonic state when Glory took Dawnie. And unbeknownst to everyone else I used it to bringing you back."

Willow looked at Tara with red eyes as the shame radiated from her spirit; overwhelming all else Tara would usually be able to read from her aura.

Tara gasped. "Wait, you said it was some strange Taoist ritual that let you return my sanity?"

Willow shook her head. "I lied. I'm sorry. I couldn't let you know that I had corrupted my spirit even more to save your mind. You'd never forgive yourself and I wouldn't let you suffer even more for my failures."

"I-I... I understand that. I'm not happy about but I understand it. Both of us are self-sacrificing for the other even to a fault."

Willow nodded. "Yeah. And to make it worse my mind was briefly touched by Glory's during the transfer. I didn't notice it at the time but it made the dark magic reach me much faster and more efficiently than any other kind. I didn't have time to notice though. I was too busy being - what did you guys call it - the _'Boss of Us'_ to ever question where the powers that kept us alive came from. Between summer school, fixing and reprogramming the Buffybot, organizing and leading the patrols and preparing for Buffy's resurrection I was too overwhelmed and exhausted to question how I was actually able to keep us all working."

"That's not fair sweetie. All of us helped out!" Tara's annoyed tone allowed no doubt of her help that summer.

"Oh Goddess yes you did. I said that wrong. I wouldn't have survived without you, not at all. However you, Anya and Giles all had serious physical injuries that needed rehab and you helped more than I ever could with Dawn reconnecting with the world again. Xander had his job which helped us keep the Summers house out of the banks' hands and Giles..." She paused for a moment. "Okay Giles was a babysitter now and then and occasionally helped us with patrols, just like Spike. He and Anya had the store to take care off and Spike, well, Spike had no reason to help us if it didn't involve Dawnie or killing things."

Tara nodded in recognition. The summer on 2001 was both her best and one of the toughest. Nobody got out of the mess with Glory without their own personal scars.

"I shouldn't have lied to you about where I got the Vino de Madre for the ritual. You trusted me to stay honest and I betrayed that trust. I felt it was necessary to bring her back and damned you all with me as I acted on my own. None of you would've-"

"No. Stop. We all knew that we were getting into unnatural territory. It was wrong of them to blame only you for something that took four participants. We could've and _should've_ looked deeper into the spell and where Buffy's soul was but we didn't. Like you said back then; we didn't want to know. I didn't know what Giles had said to you when he returned and I only found out myself a year after I came back. I also didn't know that Buffy had blamed you while absolving the rest of us of the act because if I had I would've corrected them. I broke my own principles and it's not your fault alone. It was never only your fault."

Willow looked at Tara with shaken but grateful eyes. The tears had paused but were still very close to making their triumphant return.

"Still doesn't excuse what I did. I blamed you for what Giles said and when we fought I panicked as I remembered what happened the last time we fought like that. So I took your memory and then violated you the day after that. You had no way to give full consent and-"

"Once again Will, no. I will not downplay what happened - you did take my memories twice and it's not something I could handle - but when we slept together I did give you my consent. Even if I hadn't you were as much of a victim as I was. I mean we were being compelled by Sweet during a song. We consented as much to the sex as we did to the song - both of us. Is it the fault of those who danced to death that they were literally unable to stop? If not then why is it your fault when Sweet's magic controlled us both? Besides; we've had makeup sex before and considering how it was when we got back together we've also had it since. What you did with my head was entirely wrong and I did the right thing leaving you - I won't change my mind there - but do not cheapen it by overshadowing the betrayal with a violation of a different sort."

Willow was stunned. She had never seen the circumstances in that light and never really understood how Tara could ever have given her the second chance that ended with the forlorn bullet. It did make a kind of sense to her - why would Tara ever come back to her if Tara felt that Willow had raped her? It was the complete opposite of what she knew about herself and her life to this point.

"A-are you sure? Because I have accepted my role that fall. I know I was a monster to you and I didn't even stop after that. I mean, you gave me a chance to quit magic for you and I didn't even last a full day before violating the minds of you and all my friends. And Anya. I knew that I was going to end up alone and I was so afraid Buffy would try to kill herself again and then I screwed everything up again and drove you away from your family again. And you are right; you did the entirely right thing in leaving me. You're not my keeper and it was wrong of me to use you as such."

Willow gasped for air as Tara hid a small smirk; she had missed the babbling in her long hours of loneliness in Scotland.

"I am completely certain. You should and have taken responsibility for what you did but not what others did or what you didn't do. And I needed to leave. The situation at Buffy's was untenable with everything going on. I needed to feel safe and I couldn't do that there even if you had moved home to your parents. I also thought that our friends would help you get better and help you control the magic and see your worth outside the role of the 'Big Gun'."

Willow scoffed. "Yeah that... That didn't happen. It wasn't until I almost killed Dawnie that something happened and by then I had sunk lower than I thought ever possible. And even then Buffy's solution was to basically ground me and make sure I had babysitters at all times but you remember all that. I'm glad I got clean though even despite Amy's sabotage and all the other stuff going on. I never thought you'd come back though so that you did was an unexpected but VERY welcome surprise."

"Really? I wasn't really that discrete with my flirting at the party or at the wedding. Or any of the other times to be honest. At least I thought I wasn't."

Willow shrugged despondently. "I thought you were just humoring me by throwing me a bone in pity. Then I saw you with that girl and it ended any hopes that still lingered. You had the pick of dozens of hot girls at the campus instead of the abusive addict who resemble a teenaged boy with an eating disorder more than anything else. I had only one thing to offer you and I used that to hurt you. Repeatedly. And to be fully honest; I had planned to transfer schools during the summer so the rest of you wouldn't have to walk on eggshells to live a life free of Willowy disasters. I didn't want to be the reason for any more of your hurt."

Tara stood up and Willow expected her to pack her stuff into the car and once again disappear from her life. She had already resigned herself to that result the moment they started to go down this dark and traumatic memory lane.

So she was not expecting it when Tara instead shuffled down next to her in the recliner and embraced Willow so tight that she almost started to ache.

"Willow? I never stopped loving you. Ever. I meant what I said that we needed some time apart. We needed to find out who we were when we weren't with each other all the time. And do you know what I found out?" Willow shook her head shyly. "I found out that I was a Tara that needed my Willow."

Willow whimpered even as she smiled. "But I wasn't wrong. I was the reason for your hurt - for your death. Had you not come back to me you wouldn't have been shot and-"

"Really? Again? Willow. I chose to come back to you. Warren chose to try to kill Buffy. You did nothing but make me the happiest woman in the world by accepting me back."

"And I always will, Tare. No matter what." They locked lips and kissed for what felt like hours - enjoying the comfort of the other's love and trust - before Tara's phone started to buzz. She picked it up and looked at the caller ID.

"It's Faith."


	11. Locking Up the Sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Is there a hero somewhere, someone who appears and saves the day  
>  Someone who holds out a hand and turns back time  
> Is there a hero somewhere, someone who will never walk away  
> Who doesn't turn a blind eye to a crime  
> And in the emptiness, there's a solution,  
> Just look within yourself for absolution_  
> Locking Up the Sun  
> Poets of the Fall

Tara looked at Willow with apprehensive eyes as the phone continued to vibrate in her hand.

"Do you want me to go outside and be all avoidy about finding you?"

Willow shook her head with an appreciative grin. She knew that it discomforted Tara to lie to one of her closest friends but could not help but appreciate the gesture anyway. "Nah just go head. I'm pretty certain she already knows. I'm not ready to meet her yet but if you want we could do a speaker call?"

Tara smiled and answered the phone and activated the speaker mode.

"Hey Monty! How's it going?"

Willow looked at her and mouthed 'Monty?' as Tara shook her head - clearly not recognizing the reference - before turning back to the phone in her hand. "Uhh, it's going fine here. Just taking a break and relaxing at the moment. How's things back in Cleveland?"

"Just the usual. Find vamps, dust, jump a local's bones and repeat until sore. Still I got a wicked surprise when I checked my mail today."

Willow - who kept silent as she waited for a good moment to introduce herself - took the opportunity to insert herself into the conversation. "You DO know that Nigeria is not a kingdom and whoever claim they're a prince is just being dishonest, don't you?"

They heard Faith's loud laugh and Tara smiled in remembrance of the time they had shared a small apartment as close friends.

"You're on the right track there Monty. I was reading my bank statement - yeah I know, I was surprised too the first time it happened - and noticed I got a lump sum added to my account earlier today. A sum that totals - and even surpass slightly - the full amount I've invested into this quest for your Holy Grail."

Tara groaned as she suddenly understood her new nickname and Willow grinned guiltily. "Yeah Faith, that'd be me. I had to do something as thanks for you helping me get a third chance in life."

"Then it was as I figured. Good to hear your voice Red. I mean I'm still wicked pissed the way you went away without a word but I kind of get it. Monty got there okay?"

"Yeah Fay; I'm fine. We made contact yesterday and we're all good here. Which also reminds me; you owe me those five bucks."

Willow arched an eyebrow at her in confusion before Faith responded.

"Oh so she didn't blow a magical gasket when you showed up at the door? Aww man, I saw that as a sure thing."

"Hey! I most certainly did not. My gaskety blowing was very much of the most mundane kind!" Willow's objection lost most of the oomph with her mock offence being obvious even for the woman on the other side of the call.

"So what do you lovebirds want me to tell the others? Baby Summers has been _'discreetly'_ asking me for updates and she didn't want to bother you while you were busy. If so I'm gonna have to give her something unless you do it first."

"I'll talk to her soon, okay? But right now nobody else needs to know mine or Will's status, okay?"

"Five-by-five. But Red? There's still the issue of your parents. I don't know if she's told you yet but they seem to think you're pretty dead."

Willow looked up at Tara who nodded sadly. 

"Then let them think I am dead. Joyce was the only woman I've ever seen as a parent and she died back in Sunnydale. If Sheila and Ira couldn't even be bother to realize that they haven't been notified of my death then they already have made peace with it and I do not want to ruin that for them."

"Ouch, that's harsh Red. But I get it. Don't worry though. They're not hearing for me anytime soon. Just wanted all cards on the table so I don't mess anything up for ya."

Willow relaxed slightly before immediately tensing up again.

"So Faith please don't take this the wrong way but even though I am in your debt for helping Tara find my dummy butt and for being there when I haven't been I am not in a position to really let people know where I am I mean you've been great and I would love to say thanks in person but I wanna stay away from slayage and all that and-"

"Chill Red chill, I get it. To be honest I didn't do it for you at all; I did it for Monty. And I get how you wanna be retired so you'll have no problems from me there. I'll shred the bank statement even though I know you've used like two offshore banks to wire the cash and nobody will know I've talked to you since Sunny D."

Tara smiled. "Thanks Fay. We really do appreciate it. I'm going to stay here as long as Will'll have me but I'm going to talk with you again soon, that's okay?"

"I'll hold you to that Monty."

Willow yawned as she felt the call reaching its conclusion. "Thanks again. Oh, and by the way what's with calling me the 'Holy Grail'?"

"Oh it's nothing Red. I was just thinking that once Monty found you she'd been drinking deep from the waters of life in the Holy Grail, as they say. And I really don't think there's a python in between the two of you so Monty? Just came naturally."

* * *

After finishing the call the couple quickly assembled the rest of their newly purchased bed and when they finally got in bed they fell asleep fast. They stayed entwined in each other in a deep sleep that went unbroken until Willow woke up at her regular time in the morning. As much as she wanted to slack off she knew that instead of remaining in bed she had to maintain some semblance of routines for her life to not collapse under the weight of her ever-present anxieties. Tara might be back in her life - _to life_ \- but almost a lifetime of chronic loneliness and abandonment issues do not simply vanish after 36 hours of bliss.

While in the shower she remembered the last time she had gotten complacent after 36 hours of bliss and the torture that followed the next four years. After following that train of thought her plans to shower faster than the usual summer time allotted - to allow for Tara to get some hot water for when she eventually woke up - quickly fell apart and she silently cried for half an hour without ever realizing when the water went cold.

She recollected herself and went to the front yard after deciding to wait with her breakfast until Tara had woken up and started the work she had neglected the day before.

It was while she sat on her knees under the black willow tree and removed fresh weeds with a hand trowel that she noticed the shade of someone standing next to her. She looked up at the visitor but was temporarily blinded by the sun behind the guest that prevented any attempt at identification.

"Hi there, miss Mactrista!"

She recognized the voice even if she didn't see any distinguishing features despite trying to use her hand to block the light from the sun.

"Oh! Hi Sandra! I thought I told you not to call me that outside of school?" Willow perked up as the shock that had accompanied the first visit was of a much lesser variety this time around. She liked the girl and the knowledge that she wasn't here without her parents approval made things a lot easier for Willow.

"My bad Willow. I hope I'm not bothering you but I was just out for a walk and thought I'd drop by to say hi!"

Willow smirked as she noticed the girl nervously shifting her weight between her feet. It was obvious even to her that Sandra had some kind of ulterior motive for this rather early morning visit. She stood up and wiped her brow with her sleeve.

"Oh? Is that so? You took a walk at what; nine AM?" She kept the tone of her voice jovial but pointed. "You are welcome here but I'd appreciate some honesty, okay kiddo?"

"Hey! I'm no kiddo! And I didn't lie! Technically. I, err, just heard my mom yesterday talking to a neighbor who saw you. Out in a store. With someone. A _gii-iirly_ someone?"

Willow's smug grin faded. She was in no way ashamed of Tara - in fact it was the exact opposite - but Sandra had seen a picture of her and had been told just two days ago that Tara was dead and buried. "Oh yeah, about that..."

It was then that Sandra knew she had Willow on the ropes. When she heard of the extremely introverted teacher's rather public displays of affection with an unknown woman nobody seemed to recognize she was both curious and happy for Willow. Okay, she was a bit miffed since she had gotten the very obvious signals from Willow's total lack of interest in anyone but her dead girlfriend but Sandra was still very curious.

"I take it that old clunker over there is her as well?" Sandra motioned towards Tara's car in the driveway. "And I think my mom mentioned something about you shouting about her 'knockers'?"

Willow face shifted from completely pale to extremely crimson in moments as she realized she was now going to pay for her rare drop of public decorum.

'Okay, I can fib my way out of this - at least until I can find a good cover for my dead girlfriend suddenly coming back to me. Oh, I know! It's a visit from her twin sister to hash over some details with her inheritance and-'

All her eventual contingency plans suddenly became null and void as the front door opened and a newly showered and dressed Tara stepped out of the house with a tea tray in her hands.

"It's time for breakfast Sweetie," She began with a smile. "You know you never used to be this much of a morning person in the past. I'd use the expression 'waking the dead' to best describe how it was to try to wake you when we didn't have school but I think it'd be kind of crass considering, you know?" Tara stopped as she saw the visitor and recognized her as the student who had visited Willow the night of their reunion.

The front yard went dead silent as the three women kept shifting their petrified gazes between the others; none knowing what to say or do. Eventually - after what felt like an eternity of torturous waiting - Sandra spoke up.

" _Soo-ooo..._ This is your dead girlfriend Tara, am I correct?"

Willow remained still with her mouth moving like a guppy while Tara slowly formed a crooked grin just as she realized how much trouble Willow would be in. She knew she had to intervene to save her poor girlfriend - before Willow would dig herself deeper down into the metaphorical hole she now found herself in.

"Yup." She popped the P pointedly. "That'd be me. How about you come inside and we'll explain the whole thing there?"

"Uh-huh. That might be a good idea." Tara had to give it to the teenager; she handled this entire affair better than most people would. Even better than Willow who still hadn't moved or said anything once Tara had entered the scene.

"Will? Inside now." Willow stood up without a word and left the gardening tools in the yard as Tara turned back towards the house. "It's time to inform your young friend about that which go bump in the night."


	12. War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _When I thought that I fought this war alone  
>  You were there by my side on the frontline  
> And we fought to believe the impossible  
> When I thought that I fought this war alone  
> We were one with our destinies entwined  
> When I thought that I fought without a cause  
> You gave me the reason why_  
> War  
> Poets of the Fall

The trio went inside in a nervous silence. Due to her previous role as the resident Wiccan advisor to the Slayer Organization Tara was by now a veteran of inducting young women into the supernatural world and was far calmer than the other two members of the party. Willow had a good amount of experience in the process as well but had managed to stay in the mundane world for three years and was in no shape to do a calm and collected introduction that Sandra clearly needed.

Sandra on the other hand was both confused and frustrated. She had felt like she had connected to Willow when they had bonded the first time she visited her teacher and was not happy to find out she'd been lied to. She trusted - and felt she had a connection with - Willow and the betrayal by the authority figure cut deep. Sandra did, however, realize that Willow wasn't comfortable with the situation and seemed far more affected by the accidental revelation of Tara's survival than what would be expected if it was a cold and calculated lie she had told in their earlier meeting.

But then; what was really normal when your teacher's allegedly murdered girlfriend show up out of the blue? And why would Willow both keep her a secret and claim she was dead in the first place? And what really was 'that which go bump in the night' and just how much of the conspiracy theories she had found when looking up her teacher's hometown were actually based in fact?

As they entered the building Tara went and took out a can of carbonated orange juice from the fridge and held it up for Sandra who nodded with a tentative smile. She glanced around the room and barely recognized it from the one she had seen just days before. The room was cleaned up and instead of an empty dinner table it was now centerpieced by a king-sized bed with silk sheets. It was no longer an obvious homage to the 'crazy cat lady' home - minus the obligatory feline infestation - but actually seemed to be inhabited.

By both of them.

Tara directed the two locals to sit down in the chairs by the backyard window while she herself took a seat at the end of the bed.

"So... You're her, right? The 'Tara' from the picture?" Sandra gestured towards the frame positioned on the table next to her.

"That's correct. I'm Tara Maclay."

"And you were killed by a stray bullet in a botched assassination attempt?"

Tara shrugged with an apologetic smirk. "I got better."

"Let's just say I'm gonna be a complete schmuck and accept that at face value, _how?"_

"Okay Sandra - is it okay if I call you Sandra?" The teenager nodded. "The supernatural is real. Magic, vampires, demons, alternate dimensions and hells - yes that's plural - are all real. Both me and Willow are witches and a mutual friend of ours managed to resurrect me about a year after I was murdered and Willow found out just two days ago."

Sandra stared at them as she waited for any kind of break of posture. Any moment now she expected that they'd reveal they've been messing with her but then Sandra finally broke down in giggles herself. Willow - who had by now regained her own composure - was both amused and not very surprised at the teenager's reaction. The suburbs weren't like Sunnydale and people didn't randomly disappear due to unspoken reasons that many knew about but didn't publicly recognize. They didn't suffer from the 'Sunnydale Syndrome' as the Scoobies had gotten to calling it.

"Hey Sandra? Would you like a glass and some ice for that OJ?"

The giggles subsided and were replaced by the same confused expression Sandra had displayed earlier. "Uhh, okay?"

Willow nodded at Tara who held her hand out towards the kitchen. Sandra's eyes grew wide as she saw a counter open and a glass started to hover out of it towards the sink. The tap started to pour before stopping at about a third of the glass's capacity and then hovered to the table. Once it was set down Willow moved her hand over the water and it moved up from the glass in three distinctive cubes that were then frozen solid before she released them back into the glass.

"There you go. Just pour the drink in and you're set."

Sandra did as ordered - she was too freaked out to not follow instructions - and the newly formed cubes of ice reacted as one would expect and floated to the top of the glass. She pulled the glass close to her and poked one of the cubes repeatedly as she still couldn't comprehend what really had happened. After tasting a sip of the OJ she put the glass back down on the table again.

"So..." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before continuing. "Magic is real huh?"

Willow grinned. "Yeah, it's real. It's everywhere. Not just in rituals, spells and incantations but also in dreams, creativity and hopes. Magic is in everything and everywhere but not all react to it in the same way. Tare - for example - is a creative whiz who can write, sing, paint and cast magic while I'm completely inept at anything involving creativity while spells and magic has become part of my entire being - for good and bad."

Tara gave her girl a reassuring smile. "Will is selling herself short. She isn't just any Wicca; she is by far the most powerful witch in this dimension. She always had potential but following the destruction of Sunnydale there's really been no other demon, witch or warlock who could challenge her raw power and skill."

Sandra turned back to her shy and reclusive teacher with wide eyes and the witch withered under the scrutiny with a nervous grin. "Tara, you're not pulling my leg here are you? I love and respect you - as a teacher and mentor - Willow but you're not exactly what I'd think off when I imagine a powerful wizard who could - I don't know - throw a car a block to destroy some horned devil."

Tara giggled at the oft-seen reaction to people finding out about Willow's abilities. She had never been an imposing woman and - even when she had grown arrogant and addicted to the power that dark magic offered - she still displayed those insecure and shy tendencies that made people constantly underestimate her. Including Willow herself.

"Will can do a lot more of that. She won't - because there's no need to - but I've personally seen her do magical feats that would shock even the most veteran spellcasters. But that's not the point we're trying to make. Magic is both wonderful and dangerous and Willow have been forced to learn the hardest of ways what getting addicted to power can lead to."

Willow nodded sadly and Sandra began to connect the dots. "You were never addicted to any kind of drugs, were you?" Willow shook her head. "Okay then. If you're going to be honest this time; just how much of what you told me the other day was actually true?"

Willow sighed and took a sip from her tea as she considered where to start. She thought about starting where she had last time - at freshman year in college - but realized that for her story to make sense it would have to be when she herself was inducted into the supernatural world.

"The gist of it was true, I just made the details a lot more... un-magicky?" She offered up a shy grin. "It started in tenth grade. I made a new friend - Buffy - who was a warrior chosen by destiny called the 'Vampire Slayer.' Back then she was the only one and she was a teenager with supernatural powers destined to fight evil until she died and was replaced by another young girl to repeat the process. My best friend Xander and I didn't like the whole dying part so we helped her and her Watcher - that's her trainer and mentor of sorts - keep her alive and fight evil."

Sandra looked at Tara for confirmation and got a reassuring nod and smile in response.

"It was tough. Friends died, both kids and adults, and all of us suffered from physical and mental trauma. You remember how I told of my boyfriend with aggression problems?" Sandra nodded. "Well it wasn't that cut and dry. He got bitten by a lycanthrope - that's a werewolf - and got turned into one himself. Only for three days a month though. Rest of the time he was a normal slacker teen who played in a band and fought demons and vampires at night."

"So that's normal for you?" Sandra teased with a grin. "Let me guess; that Xander friend of yours dated a vampire at the same time?"

"Actually that was Buffy. A vampire with a soul - the only one at the time - but that ended in senior year. Xander instead had a tendency to date demons and a 'mean girl' cheerleader," she paused for a moment before continuing, "soulless creatures in general actually. He almost got married to a former demon approaching her 1200th birthday four years ago!"

Tara slouched slightly at the reminder of their old friend. She wasn't very close to Anya but they usually got along well despite their radically opposite personalities.

"But it was at the end of my junior year in high school that I started with magic. Before that I was a recurring hostage and computer geek who occasionally managed to help out in the field. Senior year was rough though. Betrayal, death and destruction became commonplace enough that we kind of grew numb to it. Stuff like my vampire doppelgänger - don't ask, long story - were outliers in a year that cut our spirit far too deep for it to ever properly heal again."

She finished her tea and perked up cheerily.

"But hey; I got to design the bomb that blew up our highschool and killed the mayor - who by this point had become a giant snake demon that ate our principal - at our graduation! That was nifty! Well, except for the deaths of many of our classmates and teachers in the battle!"

Sandra started to cough as she accidently sent some OJ down the wrong pipe when her teacher happily recounted the destruction of her seat of education. Tara stood up and took a seat next to Willow on the armrest of the recliner; her hand resting on her shoulder in support.

"Wait a minute! I read about the destruction of Sunnydale High during my googling after our last talk. They claimed it was a gas leak that killed all those people but you're saying it was you?"

"Well, not just me. And I didn't kill those people, the monsters did. I mean I designed the bomb and fought the mayor's vampire goons but so did all the other students. Xander was our commander and Buffy led the snakey mayor to the bomb so Giles - that's the Watcher I mentioned earlier - could detonate it. Buffy got out fine though and she didn't die. That time anyway. She had a tendency to get away a lot when she shouldn't have. Like the time we stole a military rocket launcher to stop a super demon and her ex from ending the world."

"That's another 'long story, don't ask' moment?"

"Oh yeah, big time."

"How did all these things happen in such a small city? It doesn't make sense that it happen so often and nobody really react to it?"

"Well it's like this: Under Sunnydale High there was an opening to other evil dimensions called a 'Hellmouth'. It attracted all sorts of evil monsters and people and was important for many different groups' plans to end the world. I think at my retirement we had ended thirteen apocalypses. Well twelve for me since I kinda was the cause of one of them. No wait, two of them! But I helped stop the second one so I'd call that a wash."

"Wait WHAT?" Sandra started to nervously shift backwards in the chair as if there was a hidden exit to safety hidden somewhere in the cushions. Tara reached out to her and put her hand on Sandra's knee with a smile. "Don't worry, I'll explain that when we come up to it. It's no risk anymore so please just trust us on that. All in due time okay?"

Sandra calmed down considerably - but still kept her distance - as she let Willow continue the retelling of her story.

"So yeah. After that it was college. I stayed in Sunnydale with some of my friends to help protect the world and while I often regretted staying this foxy lady here is the main reason I would do the same thing every time if given the choice to change the past."

She gave Tara a peck on her lips and was rewarded with a wide smile.

"We met each other in a Wicca society after Oz cheated on me, that was all true. We were the only actual witches in the group though and we soon grew close as girlfriends; first lowercase and then capital G. We also faced down with a military conspiracy that involved my corrupt psych professor and a human-cyborg-demon hybrid that wanted to end humanity. You know; the usual college drama!"

Sandra rolled her eyes and put one of the cubes in her mouth. It tasted just like any other ice cube.

"The year after that a literal hellgod came and threatened both us and the world. She was the one who hurt my Tarebear and not a cult like I claimed the other day. That's when I started to go into dark magic to get revenge on the bitch. I failed - but I hurt her in a way nobody else had managed - and I paid for my ignorance in spades. You see; using dark magic is of the bad idea column if you aren't properly shielded. My very first spell ever was a heavy curse - for a good cause though - and that left a trace vulnerability that was ignored and forgotten for years. Add to the fact that I didn't get any proper training by the supposed mentor - that's the Watcher Giles again - and instead was actively discouraged and prevented from developing my skills in a safe and healthy way until Tara crashed into me in college."

"And by then my Will was already deeply infected. I didn't notice it at first - we were both very secretive for different reasons - and when I finally had realized it was too late. I was afraid and didn't know what to do and Will was defensive and thought I was lashing out at her. Which in her defense I now see how it could be misconstrued that way. I didn't voice my concerns well and both of us had quite the emotional baggage from our respective pasts at the time. Because do not confuse our wariness about dark magic to discredit how it helped us. As Will said she did hurt Glorificus - that's the hellgod - when no other could and she kept us alive when the group was collapsing. I was disabled due to Glory's attack and only weighed them down and-"

"Hey," Willow interrupted. "That's not true. You were the only reason I managed to get through those dark days at all," Willow continued.

"Sweetie, I was mentally on the level of a small infant and lashed out at you and the others several times. I know you fought for us - _for me -_ but the only reason I'm here now is because you managed to hurt Glory and reverse the affliction she put on me."

Tentatively, Sandra decided to interrupt the lovers' quarrel. "Uh, what exactly did she do to you miss Tara?"

"It's just Tara, honey. And she magically drained the brain of humans in order to feed her own mind that was rapidly deteriorating in our dimension. She put her fingers into my cranium - into my _brain_ \- and drained mine and many others' sanity. I was the only one that we could reverse and once she finally died the other victims were stuck like that for the rest of their short lives with no recourse."

"Why did she target you specifically? Was it revenge for fighting against her evil plans?"

Willow and Tara nervously glanced at each other and Willow shook her head.

"We had information she needed to end the world and get back to her own dimension. We can't tell you what exactly - I'm not at liberty to divulge that tidbit since it's still a closely guarded secret - but Tara was offered the option of giving up the info and going free or being brained by Glory. My girl fought like a champ."

Willow beamed proudly at her partner. Hindsight and time have lessened the traumatic wounds of those days and they had in the summer that followed Glory's fall discussed the events of that time thoroughly. Despite the nightmares never completely becoming a thing of the past they could eventually talk about that spring without completely breaking down. Mostly.

"But eventually Glory managed to win - in a way. She died. Buffy ended her," Willow lied. Giles had told her - during her time in England - of Ben's actual demise but she had promised to keep it a secret, "but Glory managed to open the portals to all other dimensions and our world was about to be ripped apart as demons were moving to overwhelm humanity. Only Buffy's willing sacrifice managed to close the portals for good but it killed her in the process."

Willow quieted down in the end; the memory of seeing her best friend's broken body on the rubble that morning was still haunting her memories. Tara took over the role of the storyteller.

"We moved in with Buffy's younger sister to give her a stable home of sorts. She was only fifteen at the time and her mother died only two months before Buffy did and their father was... absent. Our friends managed to stay afloat - barely - while also trying to keep Sunnydale safe and well; resurrect Buffy." Sandra gasped as the story continued to grow even more outlandish. "We managed to bring her back later that fall but at great cost. We screwed up," Willow opened her mouth to interrupt but Tara continued as she knew what the other witch was about to say.

"ALL of us screwed up. Not just you Willow - _all of us_." Willow considered to stand her ground to correct Tara but decided to stay silent as to not confuse her young student any further. "We didn't do the proper groundwork and we thought Buffy's soul had been sucked into a hell-dimension when she died. And yes there was precedence that supported that theory even though we were wrong. Willow was forced to bear the brunt of the damage that the ritual dealt us and we were interrupted by demonic bikers - and no I'm still not making this up - leading to our friend being traumatized from being torn from heaven."

"And my girl totally killed the demonic gang leader! With an axe! She was awesome!" Willow once again beamed at Tara in pride as she found refuge in the small shining moments of what she had always seen as the worst year in her life. Sandra looked at the serene and friendly newcomer with a confused expression.

"You killed a demon? A demon that was also a leader of a biker gang?"

Willow nodded with a grin. "With an axe!"

Sandra giggled as she shook her head and waited for them to continue.

"So then Willow got even more infected with the dark magic while our friend got into a toxic relationship that drove her deeper into her depression and away from us. She was - quite rightfully - angry at us for tearing her out of heaven but refused to give us the chance to help her reacclimate. She didn't even tell us about where she had been until a demon invaded the city and forced her to reveal it in a song. And yes, that's another long story."

"Tara sang a beautiful love song that time!" Willow reminisced before recalling the surrounding events of those days and shrunk back in the recliner. "And I hurt her."

"You did but that's over now okay? It's forgiven." She kissed Willow on top of her head before turning to Sandra. "The details of what we're talking about are very personal but she's right. She hurt me and I left her-"

"Which was the correct thing to do! I was horrible and didn't even see how I was wrong at the time." Willow added as she refused to make Tara feel bad or seem like she abandoned Willow in any way. Tara only nodded gravely while Sandra squirmed; quite uncomfortable at listening to their discussion of what was clearly still fresh wounds for them.

"Willow was in deep by that point and did some dumb stuff but she got better in the end. However a group of guys kept harassing us and when Buffy finally stopped them one went to hunt her down in revenge. He shot her and killed me just after we got back together."

Willow nervously looked down at her hands as she took over the story. "I went mad in rage. I couldn't resurrect her and almost killed another god in retaliation."

"Which one," Sandra suddenly asked. 

Tara looked at her strangely. "Uhhh, it was Osiris. He is the Egyptian God of death. Why-"

"Just curious. I hadn't heard of Glorificus but Osiris I actually know of from our religion class." She turned to Willow with a mix of awe and confusion. "You almost killed him? For real?"

Willow nodded without looking up and her voice was still laced in regret. "I did. He refused to bring back Tara and I went mad with grief. I hunted down her murderer and ended him."

Tara took over before Sandra had the chance to react. "He tried to kill Willow as well. If Willow hadn't been as powerful as she was he would've murdered her when he drove a fire axe into her back."

Sandra nodded nervously. She could understand Willow in a way - the man was a murderer and rapist if what she had been told these last few days was true - but seeing her meek, if rather friendly, teacher as a killer disturbed her to the core.

"After he was dead the dark magics I had absorbed took over and I went on auto-pilot. I hurt all our friends - even the girl we had fostered when Buffy was dead - and tried to end the world after Giles infused me with even more magic. Yes it was a strange plan and I still claim it was an afterthought to cover up his dumb mistake. My friend Xander managed to talk me down from the ledge and I was sent to what you could call magic rehab to become, you know, be less endy-worldy."

"Okay then. Just so we're on the same page here. You went mad with grief and took revenge on the bastard who killed your girlfriend?" Willow nodded. "And then you went on what could be considered a drunken bender as you hurt all those around you before trying to kill yourself?"

"And everyone else in the world," Willow added ruefully.

"Yeah, but still! If it were drugs or alcohol it'd be a tragic and regretful series of events but it just feel like you've lived your life on the edge in this nightly war and the greatest victories were mirrored with the greatest losses, right? I mean I'm not gonna say you did the right thing or that I'm not happy that you failed but I don't judge you for killing that ass. If I had someone that wonderful to me and some fucking asshole killed her I'd try to end him too! You just happened to have a bigger knife than I would've had, in a manner of speaking."

Tara smiled reassuringly. "See Will, out of the mouths of babes and all that poetic stuff."

"Hey! I'm not a kid."

Tara laughed in remembrance of how many time another young woman had petulantly tried to claim the same. "Honey, you know what I mean. I'm not gonna say that Willow was right in what she did but you are right in that I don't really blame her. She has suffered for her mistakes those days more than anyone ever should have." She kissed the crown of Willow's head before turning back to Sandra with a mock-stern expression. "Also please mind the language in our home, young lady!"

Sandra mumbled something under her breath but let Willow continue.

"So yeah. That was the first apocalypse that I almost caused. It only was prevented because Xander talked me down when they couldn't stop me with magic or might and just trust me when I say that they tried. _Repeatedly._ But after I were infused with both an immense amount of dark magic and a spark of true magic I suddenly became the most powerful Wicca of this age. For the record - I didn't want to. I allowed Giles to bring me to England but I didn't expect the magic rehab. I expected them to kill me to protect the world and up until a couple of days ago I still resented them for the fact that they didn't kill me. But they taught me to control and become one with the magics of the world in order to yet again be brought back into the battle."

"That's why they helped you?" Sandra looked at her incredulously as Willow nodded. "That's screwed up. Hadn't you suffered enough?"

Willow shrugged. "I tried to end the world and hurt everyone that cared about me; I needed to find redemption somehow. Over the next year the world was under siege by an evil power that was more dangerous than anything we'd ever met before - including the hellgod - and they really needed my help. And we lost people. We lost a lot of people. The final battle forced me to cast a spell that put me in connection with all the magic in the world - for good this time - but yet again I expected that it would lead to me literally dissolving in the process. We closed the Hellmouth though and sent Sunnydale into the Pacific Ocean in the process."

"So that's why you were on the last bus out? Those you mentioned the other day - the people that died in the evacuation - they didn't actually die in the collapse, did they?"

Willow shook her head. "Nope. They went down fighting to the end like the heroes they were. We faced an army of thousands of superpowered vampires and human-ish cultists and won. But, we also lost a lot in the process - and not just our homes. That former demon we mentioned before? That was Anya who died while defending a little twerp who should've died long before she did."

Tara put her hand on Willow's knee to calm her down and the two exchanged a sad glance.

"So after we got out of the city I abandoned them all. I had become a child soldier - without really understanding the consequences at the time - and it had cost me everything I held dear. I had lived in Sunnydale my entire life and my life was there - such as it was. Tara's grave and everything she left us to remember her by was gone. Everything but this picture and 'Dolly'," she motioned to the table by the window, "it was just gone. Other than those mementos, my laptop and the clothes on my back I had nothing left so I teleported away and hid from the world for three long years."

"And this is when the universe's cruel irony intervened. While Willow disappeared our friend Buffy were granted one wish from the Powers That Be." Sandra looked at Tara as if expecting a clarification. "The PTB are like good-ish demons. They've helped us but they have their own agendas. This time they rewarded Buffy for saving the world and she eventually decided to bring me back to life. I could've said no but I wanted to return as I died before I was done here. However when I returned to life; Willow was gone."

"In my defense," Willow ruefully interrupted, "I had no idea about the wish. As far as I knew she was irrevocably dead and I needed to start over which is how I eventually ended up here." Willow stretched out her arms as if revealing a big and unforeseen plot twist.

Tara smiled. "Willow had fought for seven years and she deserves a chance to live in peace and quiet. Her very effective hiding skills led to three years of me looking for her since she had changed her name and everything. I only made contact with her just after you left the other day."

"Okay, I think I get it. So as far as you knew Tara really was dead when you told me about her?" Willow nodded. "Wait a minute! Willow Mactrista isn't your real name?! Can you tell me what it used to be?"

Willow finally regained some of the joviality she had expressed earlier in the story.

"I'm Willow Danielle Rosenberg. I know, it's nothing special, but I had to change my name to ensure my old friends wouldn't try to drag me back into the war. I mean they wouldn't really force me - at least I don't think they would - but I have a tendency to go off half-cocked when I get the impulse so I'm staying away for my own good. Which actually brings us to something very important that we cannot compromise on."

Sandra started to look worried again as Tara took over.

"You can't tell anyone about what we've told you. Not your parents, not your friends and not your MySpace - is that's what you kids use these days - friends. Doing so would put a target on us that would endanger not just us but everyone else around us, including you. Power brings enemies and both of us have... reputations in the supernatural community. Willow is especially famous - both for her history and abilities - and there's many demons and evil spellcasters who would want revenge on her if they ever found us. Can please you promise us this?"

Sandra took a couple of moments to consider the implications of such an oath and the consequences of breaking it before she nodded with a genuine smile.

"I promise. If what I've read on the web is only a fraction of the truth about Sunnydale then you deserve all the peace you can get. Besides; I don't want to lose my favorite teacher and the GSA would kill me if they found out our sponsor had left because I had snitched!"

Tara stood up and embraced the younger girl. "Thank you so very much. You have no idea how much this mean for us."

Sandra shrugged. "Probably not. But on the other hand; Willow know how I got outed as a lesbian and how I lost almost all my friends earlier this year. I do have an idea how it feels to have your world turned upside down and being unable to do anything about it." Willow smiled in recognition and appreciation before Sandra continued. "Actually that reminds me - just how quiet do you want me to be about, well, the two of you? I mean people are already talking - it's a small town after all - and the club would be very happy to hear of any gossip regarding you and the woman with the _'knockers'."_

She grinned cheekily as Tara laughed and Willow muttered something about snooping neighbors.

"Just.. Just tell them I've reunited with an old girlfriend. No need to mention any of our story; not the real version or the 'mundane.' Does that work for you?"

Sandra nodded with a grin as she knew that Willow had no idea the members of the GSA would be meeting informally in just a few days. She was going to blow the minds of her friends with even the little bit they've allowed her to divulge.

That would be after she had gotten the time to actually process the insanity that was this entire new world she had suddenly become party to.

That _might_ just take a bit longer.


	13. Dancing on Broken Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _We share a penchant for cyanide praise  
>  Fashioned our armors of empathy's malaise  
> And all of that hurt, and all of those words that we said  
> You'd think we poisoned the ground on which we tread  
> But the lining is silver  
> I want you to know I still love you  
> Even though we've been dancing on broken glass  
> Parade all your memories for the moments we shared  
> Never fade away  
> I want you to know I still love you  
> When I walk down the memory lane  
> Where the night swears its love to the stars  
> There will be no more tears today, hey, hey_  
> Dancing on Broken Glass  
> Poets of the Fall

After finishing their supper the couple were both in the process of doing - strangely comfortable due to their familiarity - chores. It was the first time in a long time - since before she left the Coven in England four years ago as nobody remaining since in the Summers household knew how to properly cook - that Willow had eaten anything that wasn't cooked in bulk or microwave and even though she had insisted on handling the dishes and cleaning up after they ate, Tara still refused to sit on her hands. Although Tara had enjoyed the idle pace of the days since she left her position in the Slayer Organization - a role that left her with almost no free time on her own - she was never one to sit about while others made themselves busy around her.

It was both a blessing and a curse for her; one ingrained as a consequence of the rough Maclay upbringing. As she was put to chores at every idle waking hour she had gotten an almost innate sense of restlessness. It was usually appreciated but it also made it very hard at times to actually relax in the company of others, restless legs and idle hands urging her to action. Willow was one of the few - possibly even the only sole - exceptions as she could help Tara relax like no-one else just by being in her company. Willow was always an exception to the Rules of Tara.

Almost.

And it was one of the exceptions that Willow had faced, and ignored, that tore them apart the first time.

It was during this process that Tara noticed a light switch covered behind one of the book cases while vacuuming the area near the front door.

"Hey Sweetie? Does this switch go anywhere?"

"Of which switch does my witch snitch?" Willow mused idly without turning from the dishes in the sink.

Tara shut down the vacuum as she struggled to move the case forward to be able to reach the flip. "The one hidden way behind this - _ugh_ \- bookcase."

Willow suddenly froze, stopping the rinsing of the plates, and hurridly turned off the tap. "Wait! No, don't turn that on! It's noth-"

Tara finally managed to squeeze enough of her arm behind the bookcase and hit the switch in question. By doing so she activated what resembled a Rube Goldberg-ish machine that first dropped down black window covers that blocked all natural light from entering their home. The next step was turning off all other visible sources of light in the room. At the same time, the door to the herbalist room shut by itself and everything went dark for a few seconds before the final step of the process activated. All along the walls a series of differently colored Christmas lights were turned on. The lights were hidden in places, such as behind the top of the bookcases or behind the curtains and other small nooks and when they were lit the room changed ambiance in an instant.

Instead of the drab and depressing library-esque living area that felt morose and worn - despite the work they had put in earlier to brighten the ambience - the room was instead suddenly dimly illuminated by hundreds of tiny but colorful lights. The display not only covered the top of the walls but also somehow managed to form a replica of the star-studded night sky. In particular, it was the constellations that were complete mysteries to all but the present couple that marked the darkened roof. The 'Big Pineapple', 'Short Man Looking Uncomfortable' and 'Little Pile o' Crackers' all being prominently displayed in the elaborate lightshow.

Willow stood like a guilty schoolchild awaiting a reprimand from a stern teacher; with head down in shame and fingers entwined as her arms hung limp down the sides of her body. Tara didn't notice Willow's retreat into her own shame as she was completely engrossed in the display. Tara stared with mouth open in agape and her eyes open wide as she took in the loving tribute of the dorm room she had lived in when they first met so long ago.

"Will? What is all this? You really did all this," she asked incredulously.

Willow didn't dare to raise her eyes from the floor as she was still too ashamed of yet another proof of her inability to let go of the past. She knew it wasn't the behavior of a healthy individual and was afraid of Tara finally growing sick of her obsessive and reclusive tendencies. "Y-yea. It was no big thing, I-I just had some time for a side project when I first moved here but I can take it down and you'll never have to see it again and I'm sorry I should do better and-"

"Sweetie?" Willow halted her increasingly frantic babbling at the interruption. "This?" Tara motioned with her hands in a strange motion that somehow managed to convey ' _all you've created here_ ,' "is incredible. All these lights! The constellations! The setup! It must've taken days, if not weeks, to set up something this elaborate." She still remained fixed on the lights as she slowly moved around the room in a childlike glee to try to find the many different light sources that were hidden amongst the walls.

Willow's voice faltered as she mumbled the answer. "One hundred and sixty hours total. And change. But it's really nothing. It's just poorly made work by a spaz who had nothing better to do that's derivative from a much better creator,"

That was the moment when Tara finally broke from her engrossed trance and turned to her. She saw a shy and cowering shadow of the woman she valued above all else and her own mood changed rapidly as she hurried to Willow and cupped her hands in her own.

"Sweetie, what's wrong? This is wonderful! I'm amazed how well you made all of this."

Willow remained affixed with her eyes locked towards their hands. "It's nothing. I only ripped off your great creativity and all it cost me was time - time was something I always had plenty to spare."

"Willow? Listen to me." She put one of her hands below Willow's chin and pushed it up to meet her eyes. "This is beyond what I ever did in Sunnydale. Just the constellations alone are wondrous by themselves and the activation was really something else entirely. I just don't understand why you're hiding it all away like this."

Willow's tear-struck eyes shimmered in the many colors that illuminated the room. "I-I only turn them on at your birthday. It's stupid, I know, but without your grave I need - _needed -_ something to represent the wonder that is you. It was never for me. It was always to have something - anything - to remember you by. A memorial to the greatness of you."

Tara embraced her and held her still. "This? This is a miracle. _You_ are a miracle. Never be ashamed of this, ever. I would love to use this as our standard fixtures if you'd wish. Or maybe with the covers gone if you want to watch the fireflies together. But only if you want it. If this brings you pain I'll to turn it off in a second and never touch it again without your expressed permission but just trust me when I say that I see nothing of the bad here."

She backed away a bit to let her lips grace Willow's. "You should never be ashamed for your grief. I might have been the one killed but for me the suffering was over. As far as you knew you had your soulmate bleeding out in your arms and a year later all the places, all the things, that reminded you of me and us and our memories were torn away together with everything else you had done in your life. This here," She motioned towards the lights and constellations, "is a masterpiece and I am honored that you did all this in my name. I love you Willow. I love all of you. Including - _especially_ \- all the strange little quirks that make you extra Willowy, okay?"

Willow rested her forehead on Tara's and whispered an almost inaudible response in the affirmative.

Tara embraced her again and they stood still for a few minutes while Tara felt her shoulder grow damp from Willow's silent tears as she took in the sights of the revitalized room. Eventually it was Willow who pulled away but her eyes - now red and swollen - no longer broadcasted the pain and shame they earlier signposted as she allowed a shy smile to form.

She kissed Tara again. This time it was less for comfort but with magnitudes more of passion before they silently agreed to continue the activities they had been working on before the emotional rollercoaster had taken off like a hidden rocket. Willow nodded with a smile when Tara signaled towards the switch and they kept the galaxy lit for the rest of their evening.

After both of them finished for the day they washed themselves and turned in for bed. They ended up with Willow resting her head in Tara's lap as she sat with the back resting towards the bed's headboard.

"Hey Will? Speaking of birthdays; what would you want to do on yours?"

Willow turned to her quizzingly. "Huh? My birthday?"

"Yes your birthday. You know, the one in two days? You forgot your own birthday, dummy?" She grinned teasingly.

"Oh. Um. I never celebrate my birthday. Not since my bat mitzvah, really."

"Now that's just not true. I remember us celebrating your 19th back at your freshman year. You said that the others had plans that year so it was only the two of us back in my dorm."

Willow gazed off into the distance as she recalled the evening in question. They had enjoyed the short period of time in-between Adam's death and the summer break where they were almost normal college students. Gay and wiccan college students who had been part of bringing down a hidden department of the US military while studying for their finals but that's what passed as normal in Sunnydale those days. "Well, I kind of fibbed back then when I told you that. Sorry. That was the only year I ever really celebrated it and that was only because you actually remembered it."

"What?" Tara looked at her with a furrowed brow. "But we celebrated Buffy's every year. And both my birthdays. And I remember you organizing both Xander's and Giles' birthdays. And Xander had that surprise-that-wasn't-a-surprise party for Anya at least twice as well."

"Yeah. You see, Anya _made_ him organize them. With my subtle help. All the others? That was my own initiatives and organizing. It just felt lame - even for me - to organize my own birthday party and when I turned twenty you were still recovering from Glory and we were busy with taking care of Dawn and the grief. The others never really remembered mine. And that's okay! I mean it's during the summer break and everyone were too busy and there's so many days to keep track of anyway so it was no biggie at all, it's not like I had a tradition to maintain or anything."

"Sorry but that's just not okay. At all. Are you telling me you were _never_ celebrated? How about when you turned eighteen? Didn't your parents at do something for you at least then?"

Willow shook her head despondently. "Same thing they did every year really. They opened the 'birthdaywillow.pdf' file and printed it out and left it on the kitchen counter with some cash paperclipped to the note. I'm not even exaggerating for effect; I found the document on my mom's laptop when she needed help updating some drivers back when I was fourteen. But hey; that's when I obtained a copy of both of their signatures to easily print and copy for all permission slips I ever needed! Best gift they ever gave me!"

Tara kissed her on top of the head as her fingers played with a few loose strands of hair that had managed to escape the confinement of the braids.

"That's no good. In fact, here's a new tradition from now on: In two days you and me go out to your favorite coffee place and have a nice date. Just you and me. Just like in the old days. After that you decide what we do in the evening. If you wanna sit here and eat Chinese we do that. If you want to go out to a bar and drink ourselves silly then that's our plan. If you want to go to a really fancy restaurant then we go and buy ourselves some nice cocktail dresses and make all the locals jealous of the hotness that is you. Whatever you want - I'm up for it!"

Willow beamed a smile at her and fondled her chin. "I love you, my gorgeous doofus. Let's go have some coffee at MacReary's then and we'll see where it goes from there. That's okay with you?"

"That's a plan, birthday girl. You're not getting away with not celebrating your big 25th without us doing something, that's for sure!

* * *

  
The next day was - incredibly enough - completely lacking in any kind of surprise visit, horrible revelations or crippling anxiety attacks. They took a casual stroll around the neighborhood, which let both of them explore the area outside of Willow's usual commute and shopping routes, but still kept to themselves. In the evening they even did something they hadn't done since before Glory took Tara's mind; they started to cast spells together. Not for any real practical or combat use. They cast only to rebuild their innate connection that was damaged from misuse and death. They cast for the joy of growing their spirits' link to the mystical.

The day after they went to MacReary's for Willow's birthday date, just as planned. It was a decently sized lunch restaurant that served couples, families and social groups. It was large enough to let them get a quiet corner table -out of view of anyone passing by the large windows - but still cozy enough to let them put their guard down and just relax in each others' company.

Despite the relative isolation and anonymity - they could never be fully hidden in an suburb where gossip was worth its figurative weight in gold - they still managed to get recognized by the end of the date. While the first reaction was apprehension - they took it in grace once they saw who the interlopers were; Sandra and the other teenagers from the GSA club(as well as another young girl that Willow didn't recognize but whose size and facial features identified her as Bella's younger sister).

"Miss Mac!" Bella almost shouted as her boisterous personality never permitted her to use a 'proper' indoor voice. "Sandy told us you had scored a total babe but I thought she was pulling our collective leggings. I'm glad to see I was betting on the wrong horse this time!"

Willow's flushed cheeks broadcasted her embarrassment of getting caught out as she glanced at Tara who nodded her approval of the interruption with a crooked smile.

"Good day to you as well, non-students! And future non-student! You all want a seat?"

Sandra's eyes shifted between the couple as she fiddled with a napkin, suddenly hesitant at the realization that she had interrupted something private. "You're sure we're not imposing? We just came by to say hi."

Tara smiled and shuffled next to Willow as they made space for the four teenagers. "Not at all Sandra. You're all welcome to join us if you'd like."

The group quickly glanced to each other and a combination of nods and shrugs led to them filling up the booth with Bella grabbing a nearby chair to take a seat at the head of the table.

"Thank you, miss Tara!" Sandra motioned to the rest of the group in order. "This is Bella and her sister Eva. Then there's Sapphire and this weirdo here is Rick who is our token dude in the club. Everyone else, this is Tara. And Eva this is the Willow Mactrista we told you about - the nerdy faculty advisor and teacher of a bunch of nerdy subjects."

Tara greeted them all with a shy wave as they reacted to their introductions while Willow shook Eva's hand as they were introduced.

"Nice to meet you Eva. Bella told us the other week that you'd be joining us at the club next year? Because you're very welcome if you're still interested. We might be small but we're very inspired!"

Rick grinned at the descriptor. "That actually just mean that we're loud but not very numerous. Or influential. We're like the Log Cabin Republicans! Except, we have souls!"

Bella guffawed and Tara grinned while Willow shook her head. Over the last three years she had generally stayed out of most news cycles. However; due to her occupation and the role as faculty advisor there were some issues she were somewhat expected to stay up-to-date on.

Sapphire leaned forward and rested her crossed arms on the table.

"So, miss Tara? I think I'm speaking for all of us here - except maybe Eva who hasn't met Mactrista before - but we're extremely curious about, well, you! What's your story? We never see her outside of school and we've never heard anything about any pretty girl in her life. I mean do you even live around here? At least I haven't seen you around town."

Sapphire glanced nervously at Willow for confirmation that she wasn't violating their privacy and was rewarded with an approving smile.

"To be fair I just moved back in with Will a few days ago. Life had," Tara hesitated as she sought for a suitable way to describe her own murder, " _torn us apart_ four years ago and we involuntarily lost contact for good. Or so we thought at the time. But then I found her and well; here we are!" She beamed at the teenagers and did a mental happy dance that she's been able to keep her composure thus far and that her hated stuttering had been kept at bay.

Rick dove back into the conversation. "Wait, so you're old flames then? Because as Sapph said, we know next to nothing about miss Mac so if she's an enigma then you're even more enigma-er."

His teacher snorted. "Just be glad I'm not your English teacher next semester, Rick. That was just completely atrocious." Willow objected in a mocking rendition of the stereotypical upper-class posh English accent which prompted shocked stares from the four older teenagers. "What, I'm not allowed to be jovial now?"

"To answer your question; yes, we're old girlfriends." Tara intervened to prevent the discussion from spinning out of control in a series of jests at her lover's behalf. "We used to date back in college for a couple of years before I had to leave for personal reasons. But now I'm here to stay and ensure my Will-o-witch doesn't lead the next generation astray and inspire them to skip classes and turn in rotten homework."

"I would NEVER do that!" Willow protested a bit louder than decorum usually permitted. "Don't listen to Maclay the Malcontent here, I was a model student even before I started school!"

Tara's laugh was poorly hidden behind her hands which soon inspired the kids to follow suit as Willow realized she was being mocked.

"Hey miss Mac?" Bella interjected. "Nobody would _ever_ believe your girl. I mean, you bring your own whiteboard markers - in like a dozen different colors - to class and there's _nobody_ who is more organized than you are!"

Tara teasingly stared at Willow with a wide grin. "Sooooo... Would you say you got a set of differently colored pen markers? That's an iiiiinteresting quirk."

Willow grinned and planted a kiss on an unsuspecting Tara. "A very sane quirk yes." The rest of the table responded with mocking _'awwwwwws'._

"Are you a Wicca like Willow is?" Sandra leaned forward as if she was whispering the darkest of secrets. "Don't you worry; we all know the deal and keep it on the down-low so Willow won't get in any trouble." She winked with a smirk.

"Yes, actually. I didn't know that Willow had told anyone that she was one herself." The subtext was clear to Willow but hidden from the rest of them. Willow had shown some interest in Tara's beliefs and respected them academically but had never embraced them for herself - not in practice or belief - but obviously something had changed her stance in the years that passed since.

"It was Tara who introduced me to proper Wicca worship. I was stubborn and a slow learner for _years_ but events lead me to become inspired to really embrace the Wiccan principles in my life." Willow practically beamed pride in the influence Tara had over what Willow saw as the better decisions in her life and it was a pride that was reflected in Tara's happy smile.

"Sooooo..." Sandra continued and the tone made the couple quickly realize they would not like the follow-up question. "Was those skyclad rituals how miss Tara got you hooked or was that just a happy coincidence?"

Instead of the expected groan and flushed cheeks they expected from their teacher, she was met with Willow's conspiratorial grin.

"Two words, Sandra." She extended her thumb and followed it with her index finger as she punctuated each word. "Fringe. Benefit."


	14. Temple of Thought

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Dreams have nothing on my reality, high  
>  On the scent of your skin  
> I know we're riding endlessly into the sun  
> Feel the life deep within  
> So when you're restless I will calm the ocean for you  
> In your sorrow I will dry your tears  
> When you need me I will be the love beside you_  
> Temple of Thought  
> Poets of the Fall

The impromptu chat with the GSA club eventually turned at Bella's insistence - as the still-sitting chairwoman of the club - into an unscheduled meeting. It was when Rick noticed that Willow brought her 'Dolly' to MacReary's that Bella felt they should take the chance to induct their newest member for real.

"Okay but then Tara is allowed to remain because all of you are technically interrupting our date," Willow urged playfully. "Not that we mind but you're not chasing her away."

Tara smiled nervously. She felt safe with the group but for the second time in her life she was coming into Willow's life as the outsider to what seemed to be a relatively close-knit group brought together with a common purpose and experiences. Only this times there were no literal demons - as far as she knew - but instead the anxiety and social stigma that came with not being a cisgendered or straight teenager in a small suburb. It might not be as directly lethal as vampires and demonoids but the pressure and stress of their situation was not to be easily dismissed.

Bella reached out and took the Dolly that they had positioned on the table.

"Obviously, miss Mac. First order of business; all in favor of Eva Yves joining the Revachol Gay-Straight Alliance - effective immediately?"

All the teenagers and Willow sounded their 'ayes'.

"Motion passed unanimously and Eve is now a member. Second order of business; all in favor of granting Tara Maclay the status of honorary member of the Revachol Gay-Straight Alliance - effective immediately?"

All voted yes without hesitation and Willow's proud grin gave no doubt of her feelings towards 'her' kids.

"Motion passed unanimously; welcome to the club. I'd give you our founding document but the napkin is at Rick's place at the moment."

Tara looked at him confusingly.

"It's shoddily written on a napkin. It's an entire thing," he clarified.

Sandra grinned evilly towards Tara and Willow. "Yeah it's what you could call 'a long story' ifyouknowwhatImean?"

"Oh. Fair enough then." She responded with a smirk and she knew that Sandra would be questioned by her peers about the interaction but also that she'd keep her word.

The unplanned club meeting soon dissolved back into the casual afternoon coffee it had started as but the two older women relaxed into quiet appreciation of the symbolic gesture. The teenagers had in just a few moments made Tara feel like a welcome and appreciated part of their quiet lives. There was none of the paranoia - understandable as it had been - that she experienced with the Scoobies when they were put in the same situation. And for her own part she did not have the impending end of her human life that kept her at a distance from the rest of them like she had when she thought she'd become a demon and taken away by her family.

She hadn't contacted her family since she returning from the grave. Tara had asked Dawn to look them up just see if they were alive and safe. The younger girl had voiced her opposition but managed to find that all three that had come to visit her still lived a mundane and safe life. It was then that she made the final decision to never inform them of her survival - they didn't deserve to know and she didn't want them to. They had already used up her last assets and Buffy had informed her that none of them deigned to even visit her funeral after they reluctantly notified them of her death and she had no wish to ever be part of their lives again.

After the teenagers eventually went their own ways Willow was in a much more uplifted mood than what Tara had dared to expect when she saw them approach their table earlier on. She had expected Willow to be socially and emotionally exhausted as her solitary routines and adopted nature had been disturbed so many times during the week but Willow had taken well to the reunion of the club and their instant acceptance of the love of her life.

So when Willow suggested they go out for a casual dinner at a nearby pub Tara was both surprised and elated to do so. In the past few years she had taken every chance she could to go out with first Faith and then Xander, Buffy and Dawn - and a few choice friends from the Coven - and have some semblance of a normal life. The Slayer Organization being what it is and with her role as one of the leaders she had a lot fewer opportunities to do so at the end of her 'employment.' It was also a really long time the two of them went out and did something normal for a date.

She did love their research sessions and the events with the scoobies that made up almost all their outings during the last 18 months before her death. But she also still missed the sense of normalcy - such as it was - that they had before Willow's addiction. Before Buffy's death and resurrection. Before Glory braining Tara.

The question for her was what the new normal would be for her and for them as a couple. Willow appeared to have left almost everything of her supernatural past life behind her and only occasionally indulged herself into minor spells and herbalism. While it saddened her that Willow no longer dove into the magic as she once had - with a passion that both excited and scared her - Tara was also happy that Willow found an insight and dedication to magic that was healthier to her by an order of magnitudes.

Life and love was nothing but oft-contradictory.

They sat in a mid-range pub and dined on a shared plate of vegetarian nachos - Willow had stopped eating meat at the same time she started her spaghettio diet - and chatted away about the last couple of years. Tara spoke of her time in the Slayer Organization and how the Scoobies were doing. Willow was happy to hear that Xander had moved on from Anya but were a lot more wigged out when Tara spoke of Dawn being his girlfriend for the last year and a half. She knew that her Dawnie was an adult now but the fact that Xander had babysat her a huge number of times and known her since he was 16 and she was 9 made that couple far too icky for her taste.

That Tara seemed to have gotten over that initial barrier made the situation a bit more tolerable but Willow was glad she wouldn't have to see their affection in person. She knew it was her issue and not their problem as she also realized that her perception of the pair was warped by her mind still seeing them as the people she knew years ago. She didn't know them anymore and she barely had known them the last year they actually were together as a group.

She was happy for Buffy and Spike; that they were able to rekindle their love. He had come back with the soul intact after a year of first working for - and then against - Wolfram & Hart. The loss of Fred and the parasitic occupation of her body by the Old One known Illyria was less happy news; as were the deaths of both Cordelia and Wesley. She wasn't close to any of them but they were doing good and fighting the Good Fight to the end. More casualties in a war none of them had any hope in ever ending. More who died where she could have saved them.

Giles' gradual hardening in his role as Head Watcher in the Slayer Organization was unsurprising to her. When Willow recalled his actions the last two years they knew each other she didn't recognize the stern but kind mentor that had been their surrogate father in High School but instead saw an increasingly authorative and controlling man who resented his lessening influence. She appreciated him now for not killing her after her fall but he was no longer the role model for the old gang as he once had been. He had made too many mistakes and bad choices that they no longer trusted his judgement implicitly. His failures as a mentor had forced them to grow up on their own and he made himself obsolete by his own actions.

She didn't think Faith or Robin would remain with the Scoobies after Sunnydale but apparently they were now both in charge of the Cleveland division as they oversaw the Hellmouth located underneath the largest hospital in the city. Willow had made up with Faith during the last year in Sunnydale and found new appreciation for her old foe when Tara spoke with fondness of the months they lived together as close friends and confidants. That's not even taking into account the crucial and voluntary help she gave Tara in finding where Willow were hiding out.

She was _not_ happy to hear of Andrew's supervisory role in the organization. She bitterly remembered how he still admired and missed Warren. How elated he was when Willow temporarily transformed into the vile man and how nobody seemed to mind his past in tormenting them and risking their lives that he didn't even apologize for. He only had regret for his own murder of Jonathan, that much was clear.

Willow briefly spoke of her studies at Boston U but the uneventful and rather monotonous time made for a dull and short story. It wasn't until she started to speak about her last year as a fresh teacher and her growing connection with 'her' students that she displayed a shadow of the spark she once had many years ago; when she spoke of the past that Tara hadn't experienced with her but wanted to know so much.

And it was this subject that reminded Willow of something they needed to talk about sooner or later and a subject that didn't bring up the dread that other 'required' discussions had in the past few days.

"So Tare? Since you're planning on becoming my 'tenant' for the foreseeable future; what were you planning to do for a worky occupation? I mean I did sneak away some money from the old Watchers back in the day but it wasn't a huge amount - just enough to get you back on your feet - but it should be enough for you to have some flexibility in what you want do to with your life. And you know I'll support you with whatever I can! I got a decent salary and enough cash squirreled away so that we're not going to be in another Doublemeat Palace situation!"

Tara remained calm during the opening barrage of words and let Willow speak herself calm again before responding. "I've been thinking about that actually. I mean I got my college records back now so there's always the option to go back to school. I was studying art history and if I wanted to teach at a high school level there's always a good reference for my job application, right?" She wiggled her eyebrows as Willow smiled at her. "Then there's also the possibility of going back to the Scoobies and fighting the good fight but-"

She stopped herself as Willow's face sank into despair and Tara put a finger on the smaller girl's lips.

"BUT! I'm not going to do that. You are not the only one who want a civilian life Sweetie. The way I see it we've given everything we have for the good fight and we've earned our early retirement, okay?" Willow nodded hesitantly. "Good. Now how about you, do you have any idea what I should do come fall?"

Willow had thought about what her idyllic future with Tara would be. Many times. Back in Sunnydale it had been as a demon-fighting kickass Wicca power couple at the head of a new Coven or perhaps amateur Watchers helping Buffy and whoever would follow in her footsteps.

Ever since leaving her old life behind the dreams had been much different. She had never really dared to imagine Tara returning to life and instead it was painful 'what-ifs' that let her dream.

Dreams of a life where she would support Tara as she pursued her goals - both for Willow's own lack of ambition once she had retired but also as a kind of self-imposed penance for what Tara had given up for Willow and her life. Not just her literal life but even before when Tara had agreed to join Willow as Dawn's unofficial godparents to honor a woman that Tara considered a friend but not one as close as Buffy and Willow had been. She had also given up her sanity and well-being to protect both Dawn and the world when Glory offered her a way out.

"If-if you really want I would love to help support you through college no matter what you'd want to do after. I would prefer if you stay close but if you need to go far I'll do whatever I can to help. Be it to quit my job and follow you or if you want to do it alone I'll stay here and give you all the moral and material support I can." Willow couldn't even try to hide where her favored option laid but she had promised herself to never restrict Tara again, no matter the sacrifice necessary.

"Come on Will. You're not being punished and I'm not gonna use you as some very sexy sugar mommy okay? When I say I want to live my life with you I really mean it. That means I go where you go and I have no problem studying locally since I know you love your students and your job. I did not suggest the future as a teacher out of the blue. In case you've missed it I've actually given this some thoughts during the long nights I was looking for you. I had no idea what you were doing for a living but I had the time to imagine so many situations and possibilities of how your life was and what you were doing and how I'd fit in."

Willow crossed the distance between them and kissed Tara as she was completely unable to offer any words to describe what she felt inside.

"So if you're serious with your offer I'd love to do a late application at the schools within commuting distance and continue where we left off. You have built a life here and done everything you can to make space for me in such a short time and there's no way I'd abuse that trust by uprooting you and the wonderful little nest you've made for you. For _us_."

Willow grinned and raised her glass of red wine for a toast. "For the soon-to-be hottest teacher in the state; miss Maclay!"

Tara followed suit with her own. "And for the currently hottest teacher; miss Rosen-" She stopped to correct herself. "Miss Mactrista! Happy 25th, Willow."

They clinked their drinks together in a silent celebration and enjoyed the rest of their date with both hope for the future and love of their present.


	15. Revachol Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _And why did I, Why did I, Why did I have to run into you?  
>  Enchanting mistress.  
> Why did you, Why did you, Why did you have to be so cruel?  
> Made me think I deserved this._
> 
> _It's dawn in Revachol, alone again;  
>  I tried to forget it all, but I kept the pain._  
> Revachol Dawn  
> Berlin Child

_One year ago_

Willow sat down by the ledge by the harbor and sighed deeply. She had just finished moving the few boxes she brought with her from Boston into the small house that would become her home for the indefinite future. Revachol High had accepted her application with what seemed like record speed as her superb grades and willingness to start in just a couple of weeks to teach at summer school made her a very sought-after employee. The very same day she was hired she had put down for a mortgage on the quaint home and less than a day after graduation her future was set.

And what a graduation that was. Instead of blowing up her school and being instrumental in the battle to destroy an Old One her college graduation was almost exceptionally mundane, paradoxically enough.

The bleachers were filled with the friends and families of her peers who had come from around the world to celebrate their milestone. Thousands of people took part of the jubilations and her peers were dressed up in their ceremonial robes and hats as they formed a unitary blob of ambition and hope.

At the very end of that blob stood Willow dressed in her worn black jeans and green shirt. She stayed at a distance by choice but the rumors and events of the last two years made that an almost effortless achievement. Nobody engaged with her anymore as those who had tried in the past no longer made any more attempts after the earlier efforts were fruitless and few even took any conscious notice of her as they were busying themselves with interacting with the friends they'd made over the years.

One by one - in alphabetical order of their surnames - they were called to the stage to receive the congratulations and paperwork that would enable them to pursue their ambitions. There were hundreds of students and Willow stood still with her eyes locked on her dainty shoes as she prepared to wait longer than most of her peers. The Rosenberg name had always meant that she were usually close to the bottom of any lists and the wait was a familiar source of anxiety for the girl who had never grown out of her crippling stage fright.

"Next up is Mactrista. Willow Mactrista, can you please come to the stage?"

She didn't react for the first couple of seconds following the speaker's announcement. Then - as if struck by lightning - she had realized her mistake. She had completely forgotten about her change of name as the lack of interactions with other meant that few ever used her new name and when she briefly glanced up she noticed many of her peers awkwardly staring at her.

She started to move through the crowd in complete silence. The sporadic applause that followed other students' announcements as their families and friends provided celebratory noise when they hurried to the stage was now completely absent. She returned her gaze to her feet and moved through the blob of her peers towards the stage. While she moved towards the stage she felt the scrutiny of the thousands of onlookers and faintly heard whispering from students and visitors alike.

The blob nervously parted like the Red Sea had for Moses thousands of years in the past and she was let through without any barriers. Her parents weren't there as they didn't even know that she was alive and she hadn't even given it more than an idle thought to contact them when she left Sunnydale. She also knew that even if they had been she knew they'd be completely silent anyway; moral support was not something that was ever part of her family. When she finally reached the stage she was greeted by the keynote speaker - she hadn't taken notice of who he was and what he had said in his speech - who offered his outstretched hand in congratulations.

"Congratulations miss Mactrista on completing all these years of hard work. Good luck in the future when you'll inevitably achieve all your desired goals."

She limply shook his hand and accepted her papers with the other and a small nod was all she gave as response before exiting the stage on the other side as silently as she had just climbed it. She continued through the group of students who had already received their diplomas and they split the way for her just like the first group had. Without ever looking up or turning her head she left the annex and then the field as she moved directly to her Mini Cooper. In the trunk and back seat were the already deposited belongings she had brought from the dorm.

It had been less than five minutes after her name had been called to when she left the ceremonial grounds. It was only another hour until she left Boston for what she was sure would be her final time as she expected to ride out the end of her sorry excuse of a life in a small suburb to the old city. Revachol would serve as her purgatory - her reminder that the end would not be a relief but the beginning to her just punishments.

And now there she was; sitting on a damp dock and looking out into the Revachol harbor. It was the off-brand port of the Boston harbor and was almost exclusively used for bulk freighter shipping. A teamster had tried to interact with her and ask her if she was lost but she had just shrugged noncommittally and claimed she was waiting for someone. He let her be with a quizzing glance and she returned to her nihilistic contemplating.

'I've had seen into the pale in my continuous march towards the hell I'm due. Tara was meant to be, only Tara. The world hadn't taken well to that pathetic dream. So what is left then? Nothing but the primordial blackness that overwhelm me yet that I can't see or hear. Only the reptile brain keeps me going now, my limbic system died the day I spared the world my ignorant wrath. Only pain is left and I deserve nothing else after what I've done.'

Willow stood up and began the stroll back to her new home. She didn't live far from the harbor and the sea breeze would be a gentle treat the days it was strong enough to reach her yard. She entered the house and despaired as a few boxes and a pile of pillows in the corner - covered with a blanket - was all she had to show for twenty-four years of the greatest bliss and deepest suffering she could ever have imagined.

She shed her outerwear and sat down in the corner as she covered herself with the thin blanket and looked out into the darkness that reached every corner of her house.

'I had once felt like this and I'm back right where I started. Except not really. When Oz left me I had seen the possibility of his return and then I left it by the wayside as I realized we both deserved better. And even when Glory attacked Tara I knew that I'd bring her back or die trying, I knew I could fix it. And even when Tara left me I had the smallest of hopes she'd forgive me and it was the only reason I got through. But when I lost everything that day I knew that it would never get better, a world that take such a saint from us is a world without mercy or hope.'

She kept her unwavering stare locked in the direction she knew the front door was, almost as if expecting Tara to walk through at any moment and deliver her from her purgatory.

'I haven't seen this room before and I don't even know what lies beyond this door. My name and where I came from is all gone. Gone to wither into just obscurity and when I finally pass my memories of her - the only thing of me worth a damn - will die with me.'

The silent weeping that accompanied her nightly ritual made its presence known. She held onto the Doll's Eye Crystal as if her life depended on it while the framed photo of Tara stood facing her - positioned a few feet away to ensure any nightly flailing wouldn't damage the precious memento.

'Why did I have to run into you, my enchanting mistress? Why did the world have to be so cruel as to make me think I deserved you? Why give me someone so pure, so _forever_ , and then take her out of the world just to torment us? Only the voices in my head remain, reminding me that I'm alone and my soul is mud.'

Willow looked down at the crystal and pushed it towards her forehead.

'My life has a new dawn in Revachol. I tried to forget it all but I kept the pain.'

* * *

_Now_

She woke up with a start and shivered when the cold made itself known almost immediately after. It was pitch dark and she turned around to fluff up the pillows she remembered falling asleep on. It was only then she had realized it was both a dream and a memory. She remembered her first night in Revachol well and the darkness and despair had been her constant companions for years. But instead of a lumpy pile of pillows in the corner of an empty room she was now in a comfortable bed next to the sleeping form of her _forever_.

The cold wasn't due to poor heating and a thin blanket. She blushed as she realized the source of her momentary sense of discomfort was due to her complete lack of clothing. She laid back to Tara's side and embraced her to reclaim her role as the big spoon with a content grin; one that grew as she both heard and felt the comforting sigh that Tara exhaled as they fell into form.

'I was wrong back then. This is the real Revachol Dawn.'


	16. Passion Colors Everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I dance entangled with my dear  
>  She pulls my every string  
> Completely trapped yet never here  
> When passion colors everything  
> And when I'm finally brought to my senses  
> Parade the rain on my parade  
> Before I'm back to my defenses  
> To watch the whole thing escalate_  
> Passion Colors Everything  
> Poets of the Fall

Willow stirred in the shared bed when the doorbell rang as the shrill noise was still a strange guest in her day-to-day life. She began to sit up to greet the guest - who according to Willow had no sense of manners in how early in the morning you're allowed to intrude on lovestruck Wiccans - but was stopped by a much faster Tara who had already donned her new robe.

"Just stay in bed Will; I'll get the door."

Willow kissed Tara as thanks and fell back to the bed as she leered at her half-naked lover. "Okay but don't be too long as I do feel I'm obliged for some snooze snuggles."

Tara laughed at Willow wiggling her eyebrows as she pulled the robe close and moved towards their front door. The time was only half past six in the morning and she was hiding a worry that grew with each step she took towards the door. For normal people - people who _didn't_ spend years fighting demons and cults - an early and unannounced visit like this would likely be an annoying neighbor, an intrusive relative or something else equally mundane. For Tara these kinds of visits usually had meant that there was an emergency council meeting, a novice witch who messed up a spell or a Slayer who had gotten injured and needed immediate magical healing.

The doorbell rang again and she tied up her hair in a hasty knot and looked down at herself to ensure there'd be no unintentional peepshow for the guest. Just as the bell fell silent she opened the door while she inhaled a deep breath.

Buffy. She was alone and unarmed - which was a definite plus - and her rented car stood by the curbside as Tara made three immediate observations. First; if Buffy kept her car there the HOA would bitch at them at no end at the next meeting. Second; she had become incredibly domesticated to make THAT her very first observation. Three; Tara did _not_ want to deal with this before her morning coffee which was most likely why Buffy had decided on that time of day to make her approach. The other likely reason could be found in the fresh dust on Buffy's boots as she had probably found a vampire at the nearby cemetery while going to their home.

" _No_. I said I quit and I mean it. I'm sorry. Bye."

Tara closed the door and Willow shot up from behind the headboard as her face resembled the human counterpart of a huge question mark.

"Who was that at the door, baby?"

Tara sighed as the doorbell rang again and dipped her head.

"It's Buffy. Put your clothes on because we'll need to let her in. If we leave her out there she'll just stand there and cause a ruckus," she explained with a frown.

"Yeah and the HOA will be on our asses for causing an early morning disturbance," Willow jested while hurrying to get dressed in the tank-top and yoga pants she usually worse as her pajamas.

Tara grinned and decided to not mention the rented car on the curb before yet another shrill sound from the bell reminded them of the uninvited guest. She took another deep breath when she saw Willow putting on a brave smile and opened the door again.

"Tara! Don't clo-"

"Just... Get in before you crush the bell," Tara tried to tease but failed to cover the apparent frustration in her voice.

Buffy followed the directions and entered the dimly lit home with a nervous smile. She wore her blonde hair in a high ponytail and the white top was covered by one of her usual black leather jackets; an obvious match to her similarly dark pants. "I'm really sorry to bother you Tara but we need your-," she froze as she finally saw Willow at the far side of the room and looking as frail as she had last remembered her. She had more color and a spark in her eyes that she hadn't seen since Tara's death but was much thinner - almost to an unhealthy degree. _"Willow!"_

Tara lifted one of her eyebrows in mock-offense and huffed. "I'm sorry Buffy but you can't have _my_ Willow. She's very much spoken for and I don't think Spike would appreciate it anyway. Or he would which would be even worse!"

Buffy and Willow stared at each other as the Slayer didn't register a single word Tara said. After a few more seconds she jumped over the bed that divided the old friends and embraced Willow with a fervor that brook no resistance.

"You're here! You're alive! Oh Will I've missed you so much. I thought you were dead," she rushed out the words as if she feared Willow would teleport away like she had the last time they last saw each other. It was an assertion that was backed up by her crushing hug of her small-framed friend and it took a couple of seconds for Willow to relax from her stiff posture before she eventually weakly returned the hug.

They released the hug after a few moments. "Buff! Oxygen becoming an issue. Still need it for breathy stuff you know?"

Buffy quickly released her arms and backed away to get a better look at her best friend. "Well at least I know you're you-you and not other dimensional vampy-you." Willow offered a hesitant chuckle and glanced at her even more restrained girlfriend in the kitchen alcove.

Tara was making coffee for the trio with a worried frown marking her facial features. She had thought that Buffy had found them both somehow - that maybe she had bugged Faith's phone and then traced the call after the couple had talked to the Dark Slayer. The lack of any luggage accompanying the Slayer meant that she had not planned out the trip before embarking on it as it wasn't exactly out of order for the notoriously stubborn and impulsive Slayer to rush out as soon as they had found Tara. But now; when she saw that Buffy had no idea that Willow had been in the area she realized that Buffy must have tracked Tara somehow. And now she had accidently led Buffy to Willow and ruined everything for the poor woman.

She scolded herself for not telling Willow to hide in the herb garden when Buffy arrived If she had Willow could've kept her anonymity, she thought. But then she soon realized that the ruse wouldn't hold for more than a few minutes at best as the main room - while recently partly redecorated - carried many hundreds of books and furniture that was much too worn to have been purchased since Tara left the Slayers Organization. On top of the already mounting evidence there was also the king-sized bed and the two cars in the driveway and Buffy was far too clever to miss such obvious clues. If nothing else the photo on the table by the recliners; a photo that was taken before her death and that Tara would have no possible explanation to how it would have ended up in her care.

"How did you find me, Buffy?" She asked with her voice cold and straight to the point.

Buffy snapped her head towards her and Willow took the opportunity to discreetly put some distance between them. She had no idea how to react to the situation and was pretty sure none of the others did as well.

Buffy beamed with pride as she started to explain the process that led her to them. "I've had people looking for you for a while Tara. We had no idea where you were and then suddenly one of our tech guys found that you weren't considered dead by the government anymore and that you had moved here. So I took the first plane over the pond to Boston and then hired a car-"

Tara groaned loudly - interrupting Buffy mid-sentence - as she realized just how she'd gotten Willow caught. It was Willow's Dreamlands script that had put a target on their back as the disadvantage of being a legal and living citizen was the long paper trail that hindered complete anonymity.

"I told you that I've quit. I'm done with Slayers and I said I was going to find Willow. I'm not going back and you'll have to find another witch to take my place as token opposition in your council."

Buffy frowned and she instinctively took the defensive stance that the two so often found themselves in over the last few years. "It's not that simple, Tara. The Coven keep limiting our ability to wage war against evil and you've been the only one who's been able to keep them co-operative."

"Have you ever considered the possibility that I happen agree with them on most matters? You know; like I've told you hundreds of times over the years?" Tara continued as she prepared their mugs in the remembered variations they had their coffee in the past.

Buffy took a couple of seconds to take a deep breath and regain her cool. Both of the witches recognized her as falling back to the role of 'General Buffy;' the cold and calculating warrior that had no tolerance for the drama of those she considered her closest friends. "You just don't get it. If you flee from the fight and leave us hanging without our Big Gun then my girls will die! All of us have to make sacrifices in war and you know that. Both of you know that!"

 _"No."_ Buffy's head snapped back towards Willow who was dressed the same but no longer resembled the frail waif she first resembled as when Buffy had spotted her. She now stood with a renewed energy as her arms crossed across her chest and her eyes flared with icy determination.

"I lost everything in the war and I've earned my rest. Same with Tara. I gave up everything for you. My future, my friends, my soul. I lost the love of my life and then I condemned thousands of other girls to a life I hated and I will take no more part in drilling children into soldiers."

"We gave Kennedy and the others a choice Will! They could've said no but didn't," Buffy protested.

"Sure. We gave what; three dozen girls the right to choose for thousands of others? Girls who we had drilled into the conditions that either we won the next battle they'd be a part of or the world would end. I understand why we had to do it, Buffy. We had to do whatever it took to defeat the First Evil and we were at our wits' end but it was the final straw for me. I gave up my soul piece-by-piece by repeatedly dipping into the darkest of magic and then sacrificed it completely when I drafted the girls into the war. I cursed them with the memories and nightmares that you've hated for your entire life. So many of them have died as a consequence of what we did. Not just girls I knew but also hundreds of girls and women who could've lived safe and normal lives if it weren't for us."

"But we're doing so much good! Vampires and demons are killed nightly all over the world and several of the Hellmouths are all but entirely contained. I mean sure it's war and people die but-"

"How many?" Willow glared at her.

"How many what?"

Willow kept her stare at Buffy. "How many have died so far?"

"I don't know, maybe a hundred? Hundred and twenty or so I think? There was a couple of big battles against a demon army in northern Europe about a month ago but we eventually won and the threat there is over. For good!"

"Five hundred and sixty-eight Slayers have died since Sunnydale." Willow added grimly.

Buffy looked at her both confused and frustrated. "That's just not right. Willow we've lost nowhere close to that number."

Tara silently handed them a mug of coffee each and they gathered over the kitchen counter. "How did you reach that number, Sweetie?"

Willow looked down into the mug and sighed. "Remember when I told you just after I performed the spell and we had fled the sinkhole that I felt all the Slayers in the world? I wasn't kidding around. Every night a Slayer dies I get the 'Best-of' highlights in my dreams and see and feel in detail how they die. I feel every cut, every bash and every kick. Even those that die of other means I still feel everything they had suffered. I remember Rona dying by the way. She was gutted by a Fyarl demon about a year ago and bled out for an hour." She looked up at the others before returning to observe her slowly cooling beverage.

"The most recent one who died was about a month ago. Her name was Alina and she lived in Istanbul. Her head was crushed when a flying demon grabbed her and then flew up and dropped her from about five hundred yards from the ground. She was one of your's Buffy so you can confirm this if you'd like." Tara moved up to embraced her from behind. Willow hadn't told her about those nightmares or that nature of the side effects of the spell but she could only dare to even imagine the guilt and pain from experiencing death hundreds of times and knowing she had been the cause of it.

"And that's one who actually wanted to fight the Good Fight. Want me to tell you about Maria? She lived in Brazil and when she had been called she was quickly captured by some passing vampires who felt her presence as the Slayer. They violated her for hours. They raped her to death only so they could claim the bragging rights of having 'bedded a Slayer.' Do you want me to tell you exactly that felt like? I got a good memory and can go through the process in excruciating detail."

"No thanks." Buffy whispered meekly. She was pale and started to shift into a greener hue as the pieces fell into place. Willow hated to build on the Slayer's ever-present guilt - both for events that were her fault but also for stuff she had no real hand in - but Willow knew that Buffy would never accept anything but the most brutal reality of the consequences of their actions.

"Tara was always right you know? She kept telling me that there's always a cost to these big spells and this? These nightmares? It's what I have to pay for having caused the deaths and suffering of thousands. A bargain really," she added bitterly.

The trio remained silent for several minutes as they consumed their coffee. Tara had expected Willow to start crying as she dug up the painful memories but soon realized that the resigned guilt was a coping mechanism to give her some kind of control over the nightmares. She couldn't control the dreams themselves but she could manage how she handled the memories of them. Buffy took a small break to borrow the bathroom and then she returned with a clearer mind after the privacy gave her a chance to recuperate her strength.

"I understand you Will. And you too Tara. I want to retire too but I can't and both of you know that. I had been finished and you two were responsible for bringing me back, remember that? I was at peace and then I suddenly weren't." Buffy hated to bring out the subject but she was running out of options. Over the years she had stopped mourning what she had lost when she was resurrected by her friends and was now mostly happy to be alive. But then; the memories of eternal bliss still remained and when things were at their very worst they made themselves known and Buffy couldn't help but resent her return in those darkest moments.

"You mean when we pulled you out of heaven?" Willow queried as if the answer wasn't obvious to them all.

"Yes, when you dragged me away from heaven. What else would I mean?" Buffy's frustration was almost tactile; they had gone over this over four years earlier.

"What was it you said about that time? That you were happy and at peace? That you knew that all of us were all right?" Willow continued and Buffy wondered why she was so insistent on tearing up old scars.

"Yes that's what I said and that's what heaven is. Was." Buffy put down her empty mug and stood up straight.

Willow followed suit and looked into the Slayer's hazel eyes. "Then you were fooled. We weren't all right; far from it. If you hadn't been brought back that night then Dawn would probably have died from those hellion bikers. Same with the rest of us. We were about to be slaughtered if you hadn't saved us in the nick of time. The Hellmouth was open to all kinds of evils with no real defender and your friends and family was about to be murdered in one fell swoop. I don't know about you but that doesn't sound like 'all right' to me."

Tara uttered a quiet gasp but kept her silence as Buffy blanched again and glared daggers at Willow. "So what then? I was tormented by eternal bliss after dying a hero's death? How does that make any sense to you?"

"You died a magical death by sending your life energies into a portal to Glory's hell dimension. What exactly you had experienced while you were dead I cannot even begin to fathom but if you were in a hell dimension what do you think would be the best way to punish you for escaping?" Buffy's stoic silence spoke volumes. "They'd give you memories of bliss so you'd resent your life and those that loved you enough to bring you back. Would a heaven really punish you for something you couldn't control by giving you memories of all you lost?"

Buffy burrowed her face in her palms as she despondently leaned on the bench by her elbows.

"I'm sorry for the pain we caused you Buff, I really am. I hate how we all - you included - messed up that year. I regret all the pain I caused you but you know what? I do not regret helping the others in bringing you back to life. I just wish you would've let us help you a lot sooner after you returned." Willow continued apologetically.

"Would've let you?" Buffy hissed. "You lived in my home and you all pretended like nothing had happened as if you hadn't just brought me out of a paradise!"

"Yes we lived in your home. Dawn needed adults and the others couldn't do anything there. We both paid our share as well as we could - even ignoring the expenses of the secret funeral - and we cared for Dawnie like the sister we still see her as." Tara decided to intervene before the arguing threatened to turn physical. "You refused to let us talk to you for so long Buffy. You lied to us about what you felt and refused to let us help you through it even after you were forced by Sweet to tell the truth. We might have messed up but you refused to let us help for so long and then resented us for not doing so."

"Tara, didn't I turned to you first of all when Spike's chip stopped working," Buffy protested.

Tara stood firm. "Yes, you did. But only after you thought you had found a way to fuel your own self-loathing. And we don't blame you for being depressed and we never did but you can't blame us for not being able to help you when you absolutely refused to let us do so."

"Buffy," Willow looked more tired than frustrated by this point. "I'm sorry for all the times I've messed up. I know there is plenty of them but to be frank it's time to get over it. I'm eternally grateful to you for bringing Tara back but I won't let you make either of us your indentured servants for it. And if I kill your persecution complex it won't make you a martyr; it just enable you to maybe seek out a path to healing."

Buffy backed away from the couple and moved towards the front door in silence. It wasn't until she opened the door to leave that she turned around to look at them with cold eyes. "What do I tell the rest of the gang?"

"Tell them you found me but that I'm to be left alone for good, okay? You never met Willow," Tara turned to her girlfriend who nodded in approval of the plan, "and you still have no idea of her status. Nobody is to know about us Buffy."

"And there's no way I can convince any of you to change your mind?" Buffy tried to plead but the energy wasn't there anymore. She knew she had failed.

"I'm sorry Buffy. If you want to retire then do so. There's thousands of Slayers now and you can quit if you really wanted to. I'd be elated if I were to die of old age without ever getting a nightmare of your death, okay?" Willow offered a reconciliatory smile before dark hues invaded her eyes. "But if my status is outed I'll be very cross. I will not renege on this, _understood?"_

Buffy's blood grew cold as she remembered the power that Willow possessed. She had enough to back up her statement and Buffy knew she was already mourning the loss of her best friend. Buffy would not - _could_ not - stop fighting but Willow had done so and wanted no more part of it. Their lives were from this day on completely incompatible. "Okay. I'll keep your secrets; both of you. Goodbye. I'll miss you both."

"We love you Buffy." Tara offered and Willow nodded in approval with the tears in her eyes they had been expecting finally making an appearance. "Yeah we do. We'll miss you. The day you lay down your stake you are welcome but I just can't do this constant fighting anymore."

Buffy nodded and waved a goodbye before leaving not just their home but also their lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah I don't think Buffy was in a heavenish type of afterlife, come @ me bro.
> 
> Seriously why would she retain memories of paradise if it was heaven? What heaven would torment her as punishment for leaving/being torn away? Sounds more like something a hell dimension would do and not a paradise.
> 
> And why did she think everyone was 'all right' when they clearly were not? How much longer would Willow be able to sustain the sinking ship that were the Scoobies post-Buffy? They were trying to keep the Titanic afloat by using buckets to drain the water, basically.


	17. Maybe Tomorrow is a Better Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _This day will die tonight and there ain't no exception  
>  We shouldn't wait for nothing to wait for  
> Love me in this fable, babe, my heart is in your hand  
> Our time is waiting right outside your door  
> And maybe tomorrow is a better day_  
> Maybe Tomorrow is a Better Day  
> Poets of the Fall

The hours that followed Buffy's bitter departure were tense for them both. The couple wasn't frustrated or disappointed with each other. Instead it was the almost thick air that lingered after the harsh words and ugly truths that had been thrown around between the three old friends that morning. Both of Willow and Tara were honest when they said they loved Buffy and despite everything they would forever be thankful for having her in their lives and having been a part of Buffy's.

Without Buffy they both knew that Willow would be dead and dusted. One evening during the summer before everything fell apart it was Anya who told them as much. The former demon had told the Scoobies of the alternate universe that Cordelia's idle wish created where Buffy, Willow and Xander had all died with the latter two getting turned into vampires and eventually dusted.

Even ignoring that reality; Willow knew that her life would've been an empty place had she not been introduced into the world of the supernatural. Had she managed to remain ignorant and still survive the years in Sunnydale she'd probably go and get the education her parents wanted in an Ivy League college or in one of the top English seats of education. She also thought it would be very likely that she had remained in the closet, just as it would've been expected of her.

Instead, Buffy had helped her blossom out of her wallflower act and despite everything - all the pain and suffering that accompanied her for those seven longs years - she was still glad that she had embraced Wicca and magic in general. The mystical had opened a whole new world for her. Not just with danger and excitement but also with understanding and more important than everything else love. Had Willow not remained in Sunnydale she would never have met Tara and that is what would always cement her decision to stay in California to be one decision put firmly in the plus column.

Living a life where she had never gotten to know Tara was a world Willow would never be able to imagine, not even when she was at her very worst. Without Buffy she also would never have gotten to know Dawn, Joyce, Giles, Angel, Spike, Kennedy, Cordelia, Anya or Faith. The fact that she even considered those latter three to be positive additions to her world was something that she knew would have blown the mind of eighteen-year old Willow.

As for Tara the introduction of Buffy in her life was even more decisive than it had been for Willow(which was saying something). Buffy had been introduced as the superpowered friend of her kinda-girlfriend and despite having a close relationship with Willow and a love for Dawn in common to unite Buffy and Tara it wasn't until she turned twenty that they started to actually grow somewhat close as friends. And without Willow, Buffy and their friends Tara knew that she would have folded from the pressure from her oppressive biological family. She'd be dragged home and subjected to a life in domestic servitude where physical and mental abuse would be routine and a life of her own would be a dream of a naive youth.

When Willow had asked Tara if she wanted to join her in raising Dawn after Buffy's death she hadn't hesitated, not for a moment. It wasn't out of a sense of duty or debt to Buffy but because she _wanted_ to both honor Buffy and help raise Dawn but also to be a part of Willow's life.

Up until this day Tara had seen the resurrection of Buffy as the biggest mistake of her life; an insult to her principles and the natural order of things. But when Willow had disclosed earlier that day had shaken that idea to her very core. She still regretted many outcomes of the ritual - Willow's spiral into addictive abuse and Tara's own death being on the very top of that long list - but the ritual itself was suddenly not an almost absolute evil in her mind.

She would never do another though. And she was certain the same applied for Willow. Not even for each other.

It was while they were in the process of casual herbalism in the indoor garden that Tara finally decided to break through the unspoken barrier that turned every interaction that day into an awkward dance on eggshells. The silence was simply far too loud.

"Will?" The red-head looked at her with a smile. "How are you holding up after all... this?" Tara extended her arms as if the day's events had a physical presence in the vicinity. It almost felt like it with all the weight on their shoulders.

Willow shrugged casually. "I'm doing better than I thought I would. I mean, I don't blame her bitterness but I've already grieved my friendship with her. We started to grow apart even before I left and as long as she remain General Buffy we'll never be able to have a healthy friendship again. We use the other over and over until bitterness and spite have replaced the loyalty and love that once kept us together. I don't want that to be the all that remain of our time together and it's not fair to her or me to expect it." She smiled sadly. "How about you baby? Are you okay with today?"

Tara relaxed slightly. "Actually I think I am. I'm with you regarding Buffy. She slotted me into your absent role once I returned and the fact that you two remained close as long as you did in that kind of often toxic friendship is nothing but utterly remarkable. I couldn't handle it in the long run and instead hid in my room every chance I got just to avoid the constant sniping and bitter arguments with those I love."

Willow dropped her tools on a nearby flower box and removed off her gloves as she moved up to engulf Tara in an embrace.

"I'm sorry," Tara whispered into Willow's shoulder.

Willow held her in place but couldn't restrain her apparent confusion. "Huh? You're sorry about what?"

"It's my fault that Buffy found you. When we put this house as my home when you used the 'Dreamlands' thingie to legally resurrect me it also put me back on the map. The mailbox may say Mactrista but now - according to the law - it's also where Tara Maclay live."

Willow pulled away to lock eyes with her and sported a wide grin. "Well then we'll have to do something about that. We just need to get a new plate for the mailbox!"

"So you're okay with the risk of my legal footprint tracing us here?" Tara was hopeful. She knew that Willow wanted her but she also knew that her partner didn't always plan things out in advance and had a long history of impulsive decisions. She may not have properly considered the long-term consequences of the use of the 'Dreamlands' script.

"Did I overlook that eventuality when I ran the script? Well, yeah! Oopsie doodle and mea culpa!" She grinned deviously. "But do I care? Not one bittiest bit if the alternative is not having you. I didn't want you to lose all you've worked for throughout the years and Buffy finding out where I am is a _small_ price to pay for having you here in my life, _with_ me." She cupped Tara's cheeks in her hands. "Look at me baby. Buffy will not out me to anyone else. She _is_ angry at us and she has the right to - even if we think she is wrong - but she would never betray us like that. And even if she does I'm more than able to keep people away and from what I've seen so are you!"

"But do you think we're doing the right thing?" Tara asked anxiously. "I just feel like I'm betraying her and everyone else."

"If you want to return to the fight I won't stop you. I can't join you but I'll support whatever you choose. But I do think we're doing the right thing. The way I see it if the Powers That Be wanted me to remain on the frontlines they wouldn't have taken away every reason I had for being there. Instead they hurt us as often and as deeply as they could and basically drove me away by either their ineptitude or cruelty. They're not the good guys; they're just not as evil as the bad guys."

Willow's head dipped and she nervously looked up as she hid behind her hair, just like how Tara used to do when they first met. "Do you want to go back? To the fight I mean."

Tara kissed her on the lips with a grin. "Nope." She popped the P like a chewed gum. "I'm right where I want to be. I just have all these doubts and thoughts and worries and I haven't had the time to process this new reality just yet. It all still feel like a wonderful dream and I fear getting woken to a world where I don't have you."

"I know the feeling. Every morning I've woken up I've instinctively reached out for you in panic. I do sleep better since the bed since that reminds my body that I no longer sleep in the recliner where I just used to count down the days until I was finally embraced by the eternal oblivion." She tried braving a smile but the fear in her voice betrayed her yet again.

Tara heart broke for her. She already knew about the trauma-induced nightmares that Willow had almost every night. However the revelation of the seer-like dreams - dreams that retold the deaths of the girls Willow had activated and that she felt every bit of pain and suffering they experienced - was something she never could have imagined. Dawn had told her what Willow said just before she left; that she had felt all the Slayers in the world but no-one had made the realization that the bond with the called Slayers was a permanent one that she apparently couldn't block even if she wanted to.

"Why didn't you tell me about the Slayer visions? I mean I knew that you had nightmares but I never realized it was this bad." Tara embraced her again and Willow shrugged in her arms.

"I like to not think of them much when they're not there and I haven't actually had any since you arrived." Tara held Willow even tighter as she whimpered meekly.

"Is there anything I can do to help? Anything we can do?"

Willow shook her head again. "No. Or yes but I won't do it. I can do a ritual that cut me off from the Dreamlands but I won't. I also need this reminder to never forget the folly of ignoring the cost of deep magic."

Tara knew exactly what Willow meant. If she blocked her subconscious from visiting the Dreamlands she'd not only block the nightmares and visions but all dreams. She'd cut herself off from both the mystic and mundane components of magic and that is a process not lightly taken. Artistry, hopes, ambition and music all took inspiration of the creativity that is fueled by the magic that's - for good and bad - innate in all of mankind. She also understood that if Willow had done the ritual she would probably have withered away in apathy not long after; that the innate access to the Dreamlands was probably all that kept Willow going during the darker years.

"I understand. Remember that if you ever want to talk about them I'll always be able to listen, okay? But only if you are ready to talk and want to. If you have one of these dreams you are always welcome to wake me up and talk about it or just have me hold you for however long you need for me to do so. This is a burden that we should carry together."

Willow sniffled and took a step back. "But it's my fault! It was my actions that caused this! You shouldn't suffer more for my dumb ideas."

"When I said I wanted to live my life with you I meant the entire Willowy package. That mean all your quirks, your dreams, your hopes, your kinks, your nightmares and your faults. It's all of the Willow Mega-Kit and removing any component of you isn't the full experience I've been promised upon purchase."

Willow grinned and put her gardening gloves back on. "Well you always knew how to get the best deals. I for one is just glad you didn't buy in bulk so I'd have to compete with the other Willows. VampWillow, Addiction Willow, Teen Willow and Dark Willow are not the best partners and I don't want anyone else to intrude on my Tara-time!"

"Goof." Tara kissed Willow's forehead. "Although from what I've been told VampWillow was quite the snappy dresser so maybe there's an optional module we could get for the Willow Mega-Kit!"

"Vixen."


	18. Miss Impossible - Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _She can really be a handful like the brownies that she bakes you  
>  It can be a tad hysterical, but never quite the breakthrough  
> She's some kind of an epitome, the sea of intranquility  
> In flimsy nightgowns, barefoot she dances in the rain  
> Sundown to sundown, like she was washing away her pain  
> As she is beautiful, she's unpredictable  
> Damned irresistible, is it plausible to hate her  
> She is my common sense, revels on decadence  
> But what's the difference, it's an impossible debate_  
> Miss Impossible  
> Poets of the Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Accidently deleted this chapter while editing so reposting it now. Ooops!

Despite that incredibly hectic first week the rest of the summer passed without any other big incidents or earth-shattering reveals. Tara found herself easily fitting into Willow's old routines even as they were adjusted to help Willow break out of the apathetic rut that had controlled her life for years. Willow did the obligatory chafing at some of the changes in her cozy but mind-numbing day-to-day but was very grateful for the incitements to break her own self-imposed isolation.

It wasn't really huge changes for her. Instead of spending the entire day in the yard or reading in the darkness indoors she now also took daily walks with Tara and they explored the suburbs together. They were still mostly left alone as Willow's famous lack of interest in any contact with passerbys kept others at a distance but both would eventually become regular sightings during their summer walks. Gossip spread quickly - just like it always did in Revachol - and Willow wasn't surprised when she returned at the beginning of the next school year to a couple of complaints of her 'immoral lifestyle corrupting the children' from parents - both known and new to her - who didn't want an open lesbian teacher working in the school.

Despite the recurring butting of heads between Willow and the school board they decided to back her up. That many students - both the members of the growing GSA club and other students with whom she had no personal relationship - vocally supported her continued employment didn't hurt their decision to stand behind the young teacher.

Other things would change a lot more slowly. Willow kept her drab choices in clothing and would never be as talkative while they were outdoors as she did when they were in the safety of their own home. And it soon became _their_ home both _de facto_ and _de jure_. Willow simply refused to put Tara in a situation where she would have no control of her living situation which could leave her completely within Willow's influence of Tara's future and soon the home was owned equally by the couple.

The couple contacted Dawn during the summer. She swore - and never once broke her oath - to not talk to anyone but Faith about Willow's existence. Over the years the four women met in small towns in the central states of the US but Faith never visited their actual home. She refused to retire and as such they kept their meetings elsewhere in respect of the witches' retirement. Dawn often visited them, especially when her kids had grown up and gone away for college many years later.

Tara did finish her art history degree and got hired at Revachol High upon graduation to join her partner as a teacher. Upon Sandra's urging she was immediately made faculty sponsor of the GSA club at employment and spent much of her free time painting in a small building they had built in their backyard. She never became famous or rich from her paintings but they were appreciated decorations in local bars and cafes.

The couple got married once the US Supreme Court had legalized gay marriage nationwide and the Mactrista couple became local gossip magnets in the insulated suburbs. Rumors grew and flew as they never became the social butterflies that some had expected once it was obvious that Tara was there to stay.

They never adopted kids or had any of their own, not by adoption, magic or insemination. Instead they became the 'Gileses' of the GSA club and over the decades they watched hundreds of teenagers grow up into strong and proud adults. They fostered a couple of the kids over the years - teenagers who had been thrown out and disowned by their parents due to their sexual identity and/or orientation - and as the years passed and tolerance in society grew and then eventually became acceptance the GSA became more of a mainstream student club instead of the gathering of outcasts it had been at the beginning.

Of that first batch of members Bella eventually inherited her uncles company and became a local power player within the political and business world. Rick moved away at graduation and ended up a torts lawyer while Sapph became an EMT nurse in Boston. Sandra had tried to convince the couple to teach her magic but they soon realized that even if they had wanted to she just didn't have the inherent talent necessary to cast spells or perform any but the most basic of rituals. Instead she dove into the theoretical side of the supernatural and eventually ended up a famous and renowned professor of mythology and the history of women's studies.

They never reconnected with either of their biological families. Tara had no interest in her brother or father ever finding out she was alive as she knew they'd only be a source of anguish and anxiety if they once again became part of her life and it wasn't until she received the notification of Donny's death in 2023 that she was also informed that her father had been dead for over a decade. She sold all she had inherited from her family without ever visiting her old home and only returned to her hometown every year on the birthday of her late mother.

Ira and Sheila Rosenberg died later that decade while still under the illusion that their only child had died in 2003. In disguise Willow visited both of their funerals in Sacramento and as the sole inheritor of their estates she sold almost everything while keeping a few choice keepsakes as she used the money to fund the charities she supported. 

There was not a day that passed where Willow didn't hate herself for the mistakes and the bad choices she had made over the years. For her own sanity's sake she generally didn't follow international news but whenever the Slayer Organizations made the tickers - which was often in cryptic ways not unlike how the Scoobies' activities were reported in Sunnydale - it was often following bad incidents where one or more of the young women had died fighting evil due to Willow and Buffy's decision that spring in 2003. Every time she came upon such news she was almost crippled in anxiety for the rest of the day as she feared what would wait for her once she fell asleep.

Even when Willow didn't hear about the Slayers on the news she experienced their suffering in the nightmaric visions that always followed the deaths. One by one she saw the end of women she had gotten to know. Eventually even young girls who had been called at the age of thirteen - long after Willow cast the spell to activate all the potentials present at the time - started appearing in her dreams. That was when she knew that it would be a curse that followed her for the rest of the life as there would always be new girls the Powers That Be would press into service. There would always be new nightmares.

* * *

Faith Lehane died in 2010 - four years after the reunion - when she was ambushed by a vampire cabal who managed to goad her into an unwinnable battle. The Cleveland Slayers organized an Irish Wake for her funeral that Willow attended by using a glamour and the alias Danielle Mactrista - the quiet witch partner of Tara Maclay who a few felt bore a small resemblance to her first girlfriend - and after the notoriously rowdy service they led an impromptu, but extremely furious, purge over the next couple of days and nights that slaughtered hundreds of vampires, cults and demons in the area.

The fighting left the Ohio Hellmouth and the entire city free of the Underworld pests for almost half a year. The 'Lehane Crusade of the Faith' would be a recurring horror story told to demon spawnlings for decades to come and the veterans were both feared and revered for their involvement. It was the last time both Willow and Tara wielded any kind of magic in a combat situation but they felt it was the right thing to do in order to honor their passionate and often reckless friend's passing.

Rupert Giles died following a fast decline into dementia in 2014 as the repeated and untreated concussions - accumulated in the line of fire over the years - eventually made their mark. He was honored worldwide in secretive memorials by Slayers and Watchers alike as for both good and bad he soon became the ideal that the next generation of Watchers looked towards for inspiration.

Amy Madison died two years later without anyone ever finding out about her fate. She died alone in an Los Angeles gutter while doped up on dark magic and was never really identified as her medical records were buried in the Sunnydale Crater Bay.

Buffy Summers and William 'Spike' Pratt were next of the Scoobies to die in 2020. They died at the end of the year while killing a plague demon. It had tried to cull the human population with an airborne virus that shut down normal society for almost the entire year and over two millions died before he was stopped. Buffy never did meet Willow or Tara again after that fateful summer morning in 2006 and once again Willow visited a funeral as Danielle Mactrista.

Except for Tara and Dawn nobody else of those who attending the funeral recognized her so she drew more than a few curious glances over her quiet but heavy weeping. It took weeks before she could start having a semblance of normal life again and experiencing Buffy's death the night after the event scarred her more than she could ever have anticipated.

Even tougher for Willow was in 2029 when Xander Summers died as the father of three and beloved husband to Dawn. An unknown and untreated heart condition did him in while he was asleep. Dawn found little solace in her grief that he didn't feel any pain when he died as they had planned for a long and peaceful life together when their children finally left the nest. Willow visited his funeral but this time as herself as she thought that she wouldn't have to hide anymore. Dawn's kids were all adults when he died but they knew about Willow's true identity. They had kept their mother's promise to not tear up old wounds for the one-eyed Watcher who had grieved her death in the decades before his own death. The children became occasional visitors to the Wiccan couple for years to come.

No-one had expected that Kennedy - who had become the head of the Slayer Organization after Buffy's death - would also attend Xander's funeral. The unavoidable confrontation between her and the Mactrista couple in the cemetery parking lot following the dispersal of Xander's ashes became a famous and popular - if oft-exaggerated - Slayer campfire tale. In the story the ambitious and often arrogant Head Slayer had loudly challenged the retirement and perceived cowardice of the Wiccan couple and was then promptly involuntarily teleported from San Francisco to her office in Scotland.

Mid-sentence.

According to the most often repeated version of the tale Willow and Tara had teleported her away and then followed her to explain that they would retaliate on any attempt at disturbing their civilian lives. After that they teleported back to the funeral and left the fuming Slayer thousands of miles from her luggage that waited in the California hotel. There were no further disturbances at the funeral but both Tara and Willow did get the chance to reconnect to old friends in the Devon Coven who quickly realized who they were after they returned from Europe.

Who were in the right during the story varied greatly depending on who told it. The more reluctant Slayers were often more inclined to support the witches' stance while those who fully embraced their new destinies saw their retreat from the front lines as both craven and irresponsible. There was nobody who had actually made the effort to find them as the magical proficiency of the couple was infamous in the organization. That there was a rumor that Willow - as a result for being the one who activated all the potentials in the first place - were able to take away the Slayer abilities at will did not hurt their efforts to be left in peace.

Andrew Wells finally fell to a demon of his own creation later that same year. He had summoned a demon to try to bolster the ranks of the thinning Slayer Organization in preparation of a small battle but had failed to properly inform one of the local Slayers who promptly attacked it on sight. Before she could finish the fight the demon had worked up a fury that led it to turn against its master and ripped Andrew's head from his shoulder in one swift move. It was both a shock to the organization and yet nobody found it to be a completely unexpected end of the would-be warlock.

Kennedy died in 2041. The Mactrista couple didn't attend the funeral and sent flowers in their stead but many other witches and Slayers did. She was recorded in history as an efficient and ruthless leader of the Slayers but also a very divisive one. Her centralization and uniformity alienated many ideological detractors and led to numerous of the more idealistic Slayers either retiring or striking out on their own as individuality and flexibility were stifled in favor of efficiency and militarization. By the end of her career and life the Coven finally had cut all ties to the organization and the relations between the groups would take decades to improve again under the direction of her more flexible successor.

After Xander's death Dawn fully retired from the 'Good Fight.' She had lost dozens of friends and family members over the years and had been mostly passive for years by the time she retired. She sold California home she had shared with Xander as they raised their kids and instead moved across the country to a small Boston suburb. There she - if the local rumors were true - became fast friends with a local middle-aged couple of high school teachers. She would eventually and with their help author the definitive chronicles of the life and death of Buffy Summers and the loyal friends that called themselves the Scoobies. _'Buffy Summers - Tale of the Last Chosen One'_ became a must-read for all Watchers and many Slayers as long as the organization existed in one form or another.

The lives and tales of both Willow Rosenberg and Tara Maclay were featured heavily in the first half of the extensive tome. Their involvement in the war against the Mayor, Glorificus and the First Evil and the cautionary tale of Dark Willow became guidelines for witches worldwide but both were written out following Willow's activation of all the Slayers and faded into obscurity - their later appearance in the 'Lehane Crusade of the Faith' was the only exception.

The tales of Tara and Willow Mactrista was never recorded in the chronicles..

That story was only theirs to tell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is it! The end of 'My Dark Disquiet.' Thanks for reading and please check out my other works and remember - Tillow forever!

**Author's Note:**

> Remember: Kudos, comments and shares are always appreciated.


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